Tag: travel

Thoughts on Europe and cruising

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Admittedly, I thought I’d be way worse off coming back from Europe after basically a two-week vacation.  Sure, the 22-hour trek that saw two layovers in New York and Detroit before getting back to Atlanta was pretty tiring, but I didn’t have that much difficulty in not using my recovery day, and instead returning to work immediately the next day.  Frankly, after two weeks unpaid, it seemed like the smart thing to do.

So Europe.  So cruise.  Long story short is that the vacation was pretty good, and I had a good time traversing various cities in Italy, and my first cruise ever was pretty enjoyable overall.  Maybe not as much relaxation as I’d hoped to have gotten, but I was able to sleep in for a few mornings, and those were quite pleasant.  Alternatively, there were a lot of mornings that were on the schedules of either shore excursions or travel deadlines, leading to some jam-packed agendas at times too.

Among the things learned about planning a destination vacation as such, is that in the future, shelling out a little bit of cash in order to have some travel insurance might not be such a bad idea.  Mythical gf and I got a pretty decent flight to Europe, but it was pockmarked with several layovers both to-and-from the states, and in the months approaching our trip, there were at least more than one deal that showed up with fewer layovers at a comparable price that made us come to the conclusion that perhaps there is some merit to timing.

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Photos: Progressive Field, Cleveland, Ohio

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

[2020 note]: the following is a photo dump that was never accounted for, from my baseball park trip to Cleveland, Ohio, to visit Progressive Field, the home of the Cleveland Indians in 2016.

This was a ballpark that had long eluded me, due to the fact that it was in Cleveland, and there were never many ideal flight options when I had my flight privileges, and after I lost them, it seemed like it might never happen.  But seeing as how my dad had gotten a new car, it seemed like a good idea to have some father-son bonding time, and we made a road trip to Ohio from Virginia, and got to knock this ballpark off my bloody list.

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The breakdown of the Willy’s Road Trip contest

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Like the overcompetitive tryhard psychopath I am when it comes to Willy’s, burritos and competition, when I heard about the Willy’s Road Trip contest, and decided that I was going to do it, naturally it turned into a situation of “ha ha, you’re crazy Danny,” to a degree of planning and execution that really probably makes the people around me crook their head a little bit before looking at me next.

So yeah, when I was giving a lot of thought about how I was going to approach this, I decided that I was going to finish it as fast as possible, and came up with a route that would optimize hitting as many Willy’s on particular days, so that I could achieve this optimal finish.

What I was banking on was the fact that among the 27 Willy’s locations, four of them were within office buildings that had limited, Monday through Friday hours, hours as swift as 2:00 p.m. in one of them.  I figure those four would trip up most other psychopaths (if there are any), because the contest started on a Friday, and those most gung-ho about it would have to be as nuts and have as little of a life as I did in order to get them tackled as soon as possible.

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This is what insanity looks like

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Superstition would dictate that I would never share the details of any contest that I was interested in.  I know far too many talented people out there whose skills, acumen and tenacity render me the equivalent of like a toddler when it comes to particular contests.  Call me selfish, but sometimes I’d rather not have the super-talented people I know in my life not beating the shit out of me in any forms of contest.

But in an ironic sense that because of the server outage, nobody will actually read this until god knows when, I feel like I can talk about this contest whose hat that I’m going to throw my name into.  Without concern of jinxing it, or having anyone I know being better than me at it and winning it out from under my nose.

Thankfully this is a contest that I’m fairly certain nobody I know would, much less could, or even want – to challenge me in.  Because most people I know aren’t obsessive and insane about burritos, and typically probably have better things to do with their time and lives.

I got an email from Willy’s, the burrito chain that holds a dear spot in my gluttonous heart.  Long story short: visit all 27 Atlanta-area (plus one in fucking Athens) Willy’s locations, take a picture of the receipts, and try and be one of five nutjobs to be first to submit. 

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I don’t know how people do it

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Lately, I’ve been feeling kind of depressed and stressed about how I haven’t really traveled or seen some particular friends or family in quite some time.  Sure, I had a trip to Disney back in April, but almost at no point of that trip was I really able to sit back, relax, and kind of do nothing.  I’m not saying nothing is all I want to do, but there are times that I feel that I’m pining for occasions where there is nothing really on the agenda but loose ideas, and little or no stress if any of these ideas are acted upon.  But really, I’m finding myself missing people I used to see on a pretty regular basis, and the number of days, weeks and months since I’d seen them grows, leading to this perpetual cycle of feeling detached.

What isn’t helping the entire conundrum is the fact that I no longer have the ability to up and hop on any flight as I used to, and which is serving as impetus for writing this in the first place.  I’d like to travel and visit some friends or family pretty soon, but simply put, I just can’t afford it, or find myself being able to stomach the cost of flying, without privileges.

Frankly, I don’t know how people do this, planning so far ahead in advance to get reasonable rates, and looking at $600+ round trips if one actually wanted to make a last-minute flight somewhere.  I don’t know how people do this.

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QQing over wrestling

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m sad because I’m missing Wrestlemania this year.

I’m not sad because I’m missing Wrestlemania this year, because the card looks putrid, NXT Takeover will inevitably be the better show, but Wrestlemania’s card looks putrid this year.  Nobody wants to see Roman Reigns win the world title, nobody wants to see Kevin Owens be in a match that includes the Miz and Zack Ryder, and the best match of the night very well is going to be the Divas title match between Charlotte, Becky Lynch and Sasha Banks.  No disrespect to the hardest working women in ages, but the rest of the card is definitely not worth sinking five hours of time into.

I am sad because I’m missing Wrestlemania this year, because it’s pretty much the first time in over a decade in which I’m not going to be watching it with some of my closest and longest tenured friends, whom we’ve had something of a tradition of doing for the better part of almost the last two decades.  Prior to this year, the only two blips in the radar have been the times in which I actually attended Wrestlemania, which were cool in their own right, but paled in comparison to evenings of catching up, shooting the shit, stuffing our faces silly, and commentating on all the bad matches of the night.

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Photos: A tiny Vegas trip

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Literally, two weeks ago, a close friend of mine messaged me out of the blue to tell me that she was getting married in Vegas.  Initially, she assumed I was already going to be in Vegas because of Otakon Ve(r)gas, but pffh I don’t don’t really go to conventions anymore, much less the ones run by friends.  I had no intention of going out to Vegas for OV, but to be there for a good friend’s wedding?

Not to mention an Elvis wedding?  Totally worth it.

Thankfully, I was able to find some reasonable travel and lodging accommodations, and was able to make it out to Vegas this past weekend, in spite of the last-minute nature.  The wedding itself was everything I thought it would be; short, succinct and to no real surprise, the Elvis impersonator himself was really mediocre.  He didn’t do the voice, barely any mannerisms, and nary was there more than like two lip curls.

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