BlackLOG: 01/07/2013

You know when someone's going on a trip people often say - "Can I come along and help carry your bags?" Well, with Mrs B's recent broken ankle incident, I stepped up to the plate and offered my services on her business trip to Washington and Chicago. It would have gone very well if I hadn't managed to come down with a bug the night before we flew. Poor Mrs B ended up limping around doing my packing....Oh, the shame....

While Mrs B was in Business Class, trying every broken ankle trick in the book to get me upgraded, I remained lolling in cattle class stewing in my own misery. I thought for one glorious minute that I was going to get four empty seats to myself and be able to lie flat out.....Only some guy decided to rain on my parade and shortly after take off decided to switch seats*...Aaaarrrggghhhh - I would have thrown up on him but I just didn't have the energy..... I managed to watch half a movie and avoided eating anything that airlines laughingly describe as food. Not my finest flight.....

* I heard a wonderful anecdote on the Danny Baker show recently, about a man who was desperately trying to switch seats with anyone on his flight. Was he trying to avoid someone? Was he trying to sit with someone? Well I guess you could say it was the latter....

You see he was desperate to sit with himself...

What do you mean you want more of an explanation?

OK...If I must.

The gentleman was on the large size and had booked himself two seats, unfortunately he checked in late and was issued seats 2f and 21A....I'm guessing while he was big he wasn't that big.

For the first two days in Washington I hardly managed to eat a thing and just took on some water. On the first morning I managed to do some work before being driven out of the hotel by the maids. I did some light sightseeing. The Whitehouse, Washington Memorial (or at least the scaffolding around the outside) Lincoln Memorial and Capitol Hill. Mrs B was tied up with a works dinner and had arranged for me to dine with the WAGs of her business. While the WAGs tucked into their steaks, fish, lamb etc I managed to nibble at some lettuce leaves...Deep joy... The conversation went OK until the subject of her Maj came up. No, not Madonna, but Queenie. The general opinion around the table was that Queenie's life was one of the most difficult imaginable....While I have a certain amount of respect for the Royal Family I'm afraid I could not let it stand. I pointed out that someone living in the middle of a council estate might disagree. The argument stayed civil but I believe it brought my WAG career to an abrupt and somewhat premature end.....

Whisky Tour

Still, when you are a blogger you are never alone - I remembered that a fellow Blogger used to live in Washington - Racheal King from the excellent "LivitLuvit blog" that I have followed for a number of years. I wrote to her and asked if she had any good tips as a Washington D.C. resident for a non-touristy tour. Racheal didn't let me down and came up with some fantastic reference points around the city. I had of course not taken into account that Racheal is a huge Whisky fan and the majority of those reference points were whisky-related....An interesting tour for a non-drinker to take but I enjoyed it just the same. I also strongly suspect that when Racheal gave me the names she didn't expect me to do all of them in a single afternoon/evening and all on foot. I happened to use my ski tracks app to plot my trip, which reliably informed me that I managed to cover just over 15 miles and passed about 600 Starbucks and 2 independent cafes - Come on America, Starbucks should not be the only choice....

Next time - we take on Chicago

Photo finish