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It's been a while since I've posted any of my wisdom about traveling to any random stranger out there that happens across this blog. Mainly because I've not been too well, so went through a bit of a period with no travel. Also, I'll caveat that there aren't actually any pearls of wisdom here, just stories.

So, the first story is from last year when I was traveling back from one of the cities I've been going to a lot. Before I get to the story, I need to fill you in on a conversation that a team I was working on had a few years back that can be best described as “you know you're too fat when ...” There was much discussion and I have to admit that I'm in danger of moving into this category, but the main theme was around the belt extensions you get on a plane - the gist being that if you need to ask for one, it's probably about time to look at some diet options. Anyway, I think I can go one better. Not sure if everyone knows, but if you touch the sides of the metal detector when you walk through, you set it off. Well, the woman in front of me waddled through and set off the metal detector as she bounced off the sides of it. The security person informed her that she couldn't touch the sides and she summarily “backed up”, turned sideways and attempted to maneuver through that way. No joy, still touch the sides. I'm therefore going with the quote as being “you know you're too fat when you can't get through the airport security metal detector without setting it off”.

What happens next is that you get the wand and pat down instead. Wouldn't you have just died laughing if the person coming over to do the check said “looks like we're going to have to put in for overtime to do this one”. But they didn't .... sadly.

Onto the next. I've noticed that taxi drivers have no clue where they're going these days and rely solely on GPS. I'm in Houston right now and the taxi I just got, the guy just passed me his GPS system and grunted “address”. I told him I didn't know how to use his system as I really couldn't be bothered to figure it out, so he pulled over to read the address I'd got for the hotel as he couldn't understand it by me saying. He still failed to get the address into the system as he couldn't spell “Houston”. I suggested he move to Seattle where the ability to spell Houston wouldn't be so much of an issue.

OK, last one and this isn't related to travel except that I came across it whilst at the airport. I was looking through some apps on ye olde download store and came across an app for children that had really poor ratings. The app was to teach kids the alphabet sort of thing and the significant number of bad ratings were due to the fact that it claimed E is for Fire Truck. I haven't seen the app and may give the benefit of doubt to the programmer coming from a country where a Fire Truck is referred to as an Engine. I don't know if they spell out the word or not (clearly I didn't opt to download it). I did quite like the fact that one person had posted that when their son asked why is it E for Fire Truck, he replied it's E for Elephant, but the elephant took too long to get here and was overtaken by the Fire Truck.