Anyone that knows me realizes that I am a big Toto fan. Yet I had never had a chance to see them live. So, when I discovered they were touring in St. Louis, I called my pal, James, to see if he would like to join me. He had just seen them in Paris but couldn’t convince the family to do the whole back stage VIP experience. Well, it didn’t take much to convince him to join me for a bucket list trip including the whole backstage VIP thing. Continue reading Toto Concert
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Trip to Orient – Feb 2012
Trip to the Orient
In February 2012, I was given the opportunity to travel to the Orient for IBM; China & Japan to be precise. Going to Shanghai and Tokyo for a two weeks on business was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.
To China
Our trip to the orient didn’t start off well at all. As we arrived in the Chicago airport my colleague, Terry, and I were greeted with two flight delays then the ultimate cancellation due to equipment failure. On the positive side of things, it’s always best to have equipment failure on the ground before you take off. But that put our arrival in China behind by a day.
Rebooking my flight was an adventure. After a long wait in line behind one of those difficult customers, I walked up to the counter and proudly said that I would be easy to deal with because I had flexibility in my travel. Wrong. Because I used airline awards to subsidize my upgrade to business class, the airline automatically rebooked me on another flight to Shanghai in business class. Their route was going to take me from Chicago to Newark to Paris to Shanghai.
The gracious host in the Admiral’s club worked on options for almost 30 minutes before we settled on the two best choices. I was tired so it took me a while to decide which option was best. The first option was fly business class Chicago to London (8 hr) with a 6 hr layover then to Shanghai (11 hr) arriving on Saturday at 9:30 am China time. Option two was to stay in Chicago overnight and fly out on the original 10:30 flight to China (14 hr) but in coach. You probably did the math in your head a lot faster than it took me. (I said I was tired) Right, 25 hours travel time in business class versus 14 in coach but with a full night’s sleep in a free hotel. Continue reading Trip to Orient – Feb 2012
World Series 2011
October 2011 – My Cardinals Are in the Series
On Wednesday, we got a text from our friend teasing us about her son, Shea, going to game 6 of the World Series. Now this wouldn’t be a big deal except Shea is a Cub fan. It’s no secret that seeing Cardinals – live in the World Series is on the top five of my bucket list. Deb could tell it was eating at me. Before I was off the phone, Deb found tickets available for Game 6 on the web. Little did I know that we were in for the treat of a lifetime.
Continue reading World Series 2011