Trip to Philly

I was just on a trip to Philadelphia, where I had three goals:

• Eat a Philly cheesesteak sandwich,
• see Independence Hall
• and run up the steps of the Art Museum like Rocky.

So here are the stories with my goals. The first one was easy because the hotel and the conference center were right across the street from the Reading Terminal Market and there's all kinds of great food there.
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I had one disappointing food from there, and those were the fries from the cheesesteak place. But there was some Amish ice cream that was so good, it almost made me cry. I also got a cheesesteak sandwich with Cheese Whiz and onions.
It was pretty good.

The second one wasn't hard either because a couple of us walked that direction, looking for a place to eat, but we didn't find anything that caught our fancy, so we kept going and ran into Independence Hall.

No place to eat there, so we turned around to find a restaurant. Goal two done.

The last goal, though, was a test of my desire to follow through. Running up the steps of the art museum like Rocky seemed to be a common goal among the people I traveled with. The trouble was that we all had different times we wanted to do it. I kept putting mine off for various reasons, but the final day of the trip came and a tropical storm brought rain all day. And all day, I was at the conference. As soon as the conference ended, we went to dinner. The rain kept falling, making me wonder just how badly I wanted to run up the now-wet steps of the museum. I mapped it out and decided to walk, since it was only almost 2 miles away and I'm too cheap to take a taxi for 2 miles.

So I set off at 9:30 at night, through Philadelphia, towards the art museum. Fortunately for me, the rain stopped while I walked, but that didn't do anything for drying off the steps up to the museum. I got there, took a deep breath, and took off up the steps. Once I got to the top, I turned around and took a picture of City Hall from the top of the steps.

I made it. But I had to really want it. I don't think I have anything close to the determination and hard work that the Italian Stallion showed, but I did it.

Ben Franklin

I'm not kidding about this. A Ben Franklin impersonator just got a standing ovation at our meeting. Before he even said anything. Does anyone else find that a completely surreal thought? Also, it reminds me of that episode of The Office. If you don't know which one I'm talking about, do yourself a favor and watch that.

I know you can't see him in this picture, but Ben Franklin's just on the other side of that guy right in the middle. He decided to cover Ben Franklin right when I took the picture and I didn't want to take another one. So just use your imagination. I promise he's there.

In Philly

Big jump, I know, but here's the latest in my adventures, so just roll with it. I was on a flight to Philadelphia today, sitting next to a guy who was listening to his iPhone, which he had switched to Airplane Mode. Airplane Mode deactivates all the radio transmission features of the iPhone and makes it a touchscreen iPod.

"So what? That describes pretty much everyone on the planet now," you're thinking. What made this special is that it was a good long while after we started our descent to land. For some reason, the guy across the aisle and up a row decided that this single iPod (which the owner claimed was turned off) was going to create enough interference to crash the plane. Or something, but he was so upset he was practically climbing over the seat, yelling at the guy next to me.

As I watched and kind of listened, I wondered what was a bigger threat to the safety of the airplane and the passengers: one guy with his iPod headphones in or a crazy guy, climbing all over the place, threatening to put the iPod somewhere I hope an iPod has never been? The guy was even yelling about it as we waited for our luggage to show up.

After that, we had to find a way to the hotel, so I suggested the transit authority's train. It was kind of a fun experience and not at all as fast as I'd expected it to be. Nothing completely out of the ordinary happened there, it was just a fun experience.