What are you nerds doing?

Creating Google Mashups, of course! This is something I did while in Istanbul on the Bosphorus cruise - it's 10MB and requires Google Earth.

I'll work on converting/post processing/uploading/captioning photos this weekend along with write up the trip.

Istanbullshit

Up until 30 hours ago, I was doing great - met great people, had a lot
of fun and was doing well. That is, until rush hour traffic got me to
the airport 75 minutes before my flight - 8am for a 9:15 flight.. I
think - cool, no problem. I haul ass to the British Airways checkin
desk only to find that it's been shut down. Seriously, wtf? I run to
the ticketing booth and the middle aged woman takes one look at my
passport and said, sorry -we can't get you on this flight. Fuck. I
complain and she says, I can't do anything, our computers are down -
come back at 1pm. I flip out and call the AA Exec Plat desk, which
supposedly is top tier support for top tier fliers. Their answer was -
well, even though you bought the ticket from us, we can't redo your
ticket and was told that I should "try looking at Orbitz" to book
alternate flights home. I found the cheapest flight home the next day
- $800. I really had no choice but to book it and eat the cost in
addition to another night of a hotel and other expenses. Great, a
$1000 fuckup.

Flash forward to today: I get to the airport at 6:30 am for a 9:45 am
flight. I decided to go check out the British Airways checkin since
apparently getting there 75 mins before isn't an option. Guess what -
checkin for the flight starts 2 hours before departure. That means
that the BA checkin window is less than 45 minutes. That's just
pitiful.

Now I'm sitting on the floor at Istanbul's airport, thumbing out this
on my Blackberry. I hope I get home today, but I am pretty
demoralized, depressed and emotionally exhausted. Again, BA takes the
cake when it comes to being underwhelming, pitiful and apathetic.

Things I've learned:
*British Airways is pretty much a poor airline.
*AA EP desk has let me down again, and despite being at roughly 1.6
million miles lifetime with them, I'm seriously considering starting
over with someone else.

On another note, Istanbul has to have the most expensive restaurants
post security that I've ever seen. A can of coke? 6.50 Turkish Lira
($5). A whopper meal at Burger King? 15.50 YTL ($12.50). And there
seems to be very minimal nonsmoking areas here.

I just want to go home.

Turkish Baths

I actually did other stuff in Istanbul thus far, but I've got a story to share instead of a checklist of events.

For those who giggled and guffawed at the thought of my pudgy ass getting a Turkish bath, I decided to go all in and went to Cermberlitas Hamam for a scrubbing and beating. I had no idea what to expect, so I was quite nervous.

You're first led into the changing area where you basically get wrapped in just a towel and led downstairs into the main room. The main room is pretty fucking hot, so you sweat to the point of near exhaustion and duck into a cool part of the room, douse yourself with cold water, and then go lay back out and repeat the process. I did this for about a half an hour and decided to get beat up by a burly man.

The scrubbing process basically entails you getting scrubbed, soaped and washed - then comes the abuse. And it wasn't like my masseuse was a woman (or even hot) - imagine a burly old man built like a linebacker. I got the most physically painful massage ever in my life going "oh fuck" and "motherfucker!" Then came the fun part "TERN OVUR!!!" he shouted at me. I was in a daze from the pain and he grabs my shoulder and forcibly rolls me over in a wrestling-type move that left me stunned and had the wind knocked out of me. Then he proceeded to massage my stomach with the same force that you'd give a brutal massage with and kepy doing this for what seemed like hours. I tell you - waterboarding is cake compared to this abuse. When I woke up the next morning, I found multiple bruises. The whole experience cost me 50 YTL ($40), including tip (which they love to hit you up for more, it being a tourist place and all).

I still hurt.

"Do you know Excel?"

Well, after my 2 hour delay in Chicago, I had to flat out sprint from Terminal 3 at Heathrow, hop on the transfer bus and then go through the security nonsense, leaving me one big smelly sweaty mess. So as soon as I sit down and stow my gear, the pilot says, oh by the way, there's going to be an hour delay leaving. Just my luck.

Flight over was just fine - flight wasn't crowded and I just sort of kicked back. Due to the late flight arriving into London, my luggage showed up 7 hours later at the hotel. After filling out the missing luggage form, the nice woman goes "Do you know Excel?" Not missing a beat, I said, sure, what's up? Trying to explain merging cells with words in my Turkish phrasebook didn't help much but we got through it. But hey, what's an incident like that to get my trip off to a good start?

Made it to the hotel and decided to go check out the Blue Mosque. It was pretty impressive and I liked what I saw - it being a mosque and all. To be honest, every house of worship blends together to me. Big halls, ornate decorations and general craziness.

Spent the evening drinking with some faux-Canadians - they were from Tennessee, but they said they were from Canuckistan, I guess it's being safe but at the same time, sort of emasculates Canada. But the drinking session lasted until 3am and I slept like a log.

next up: I describe the torture that is a Turkish bath. Get your giggling in now!

Another day at the airport

I love going to O'Hare. Seriously, I do. I love it the same amount as I enjoy heartbreak, getting kicked in the groin repeatedly, the Clintons and network TV. It's just one of those days - bad weather, flight delays, and nervous Nick is worried about making his connection. I like slow TSA agents, surly checkin people and TSA agents who toss my camera bag around like it's a rag doll.

TSA man: "Wow, you must be a photographer. What do you shoot?"
Me: "Adult entertainment. Mainly men in groups."

Sometimes you need to make your entertainment. Sometimes you just need to give people the creeps.

Oh well. I'll drink some good drinks and nod off on the plane. Hopefully I'll be able to hit the champagne bar in the BA lounge in Terminal 1 in Heathrow before I'm off to Istanbul.

Fugue States

For those who have noticed, I've been without a blog entry for over a month now. I spent time thinking about 2008 and what I want to do with my life and pouring my heart out (albeit in a restrained manner) isn't healthy for me to do.

2007 was a... well, year. I had good moments, I had rock bottom moments. And despite all the good I can do and want to do, I can't spend time with the person I feel I owe it all to. I took an opportunity and it failed. But we know that there are moments in life where you're either damned if you do or damned if you don't. Most people are content with damned if you don't - I'd rather be damned if I do.

But instead, we'll talk about travel more. I'm going to Istanbul tomorrow in what should be a fun flight over. The cameras are charged, the lenses are clean and I'm going to prepare to shoot >1200 photos in less than a week.

Oh, and some interesting anecdotes from the past month:

1) During pre-op questioning for my recent surgery, I was asked the question of "did you take any aspirin or eat any garlic or gingko biloba?" I responded with "I had some garlic-flavored aspirin this morning. OMG do you think that's bad?" and getting a very confused look in return.

2) When sending care packages to your friends in Iraq, it's best to use their actual rank when addressing packages versus a fake rank otherwise you will get an angry phone call at 2am calling you a sonofabitch, among other lovely things. My friend the Staff Sergent managed to get punched in the gut by the Master Gunner for having my package addressed to "Lieutenant General." So come June or so, I fully expect to be beaten with a baseball bat.

I'll try to blog from Istanbul when I've got the time. My hotel allegedly has free wifi, so I'll be looking into using that for updating photos as I go along.