The first leg of the flight was uneventful.......... when I was waiting for boarding for the second leg I was called to the desk. I thought that I was going to be offered an upgrade or something, but instead they took my boarding pass off me- apparently they had a problem with weight on the plane- I am clearly carrying a few pounds!
I was allowed back on when some other calculations had been done that proved that it would still fly.
There was 2' of snow in Cleveland and the hotel pool- shown above, was not particularly inviting!
The work that I was there to do was fine- I looked at the things that I needed to and got the information that I was after.
I hired a 3.6 litre Pontiac Grand-Prix automatic. Powerful, but slow to respond and huge.
There was noting of particular note to report until my last night- when I was left to my own devices. I went out to find a bit of dinner, and ended up very lost. I was not worried about it since I had a map (or so I thought- it turned out to be useless) and I was just having a look about the area anyway.
My hotel was in a leafy and rural area, but as it got dark, I found myself lost in a much more urban and rough looking area. Even that was not too much of a problem, until some guy roared past me as I was deciding where to go- but he didn't leave enough space and so scraped my wing-mirror down his door. He then stopped and got out of the car- as I did. The Pontiac was unscathed, but the other guys car was slightly damaged. He told me that he could not believe that I had hit his car- and so I agreed with him- he had been too close to me! Anyway, when I told him that my car rental details told me that I must call the police and the rental car rescue crew out in order to make a claim possible, he became a bit more irritable (he was not keen on the police coming out.) There were all sorts of people who knew him stopping to ask him if things were OK and the situation was getting less comfortable by the second.
Anyway, to cut the story a bit shorter, he decided that if I gave him all of my money, then I could leave! I gave him my $65 and he advised me to head in the other direction as I was 'I da hood' where I was (He was disappointed that I had not got much on me.) I did this and got back to the hotel safely! What a great alternative to having a nice meal.
The flight home was fine and my only regret is that I did not get a receipt off the guy that I met in 'da hood' so that I could claim it on expenses.
So that's the highlights of the trip!
