Guess where we are?

Fullsteam Brewery

Last night -- my last in Durham -- I decided to go out to the Fullsteam brewery. I had tried their Working Man's Lunch beer at the tasting on Monday, and decided I should check them out on my free evening.

Their brewery has a nice pub, with their beers as well as those of some others. They espouse what they call "plow to pint from North Carolina" brewing, which means that it's all locally sourced. Even the chocolate that goes into the WML beer is from a local chocolatier. They don't serve food, but they invite local food trucks to come. And last night, Chirba Chirba was there.

Chirba Chirba make tasty dumplings, including a vegan "veggie-ling" with a mushroom filling. AWESOME!!

There's something about a train...

Just boarded the Amtrak Carolinian for what I believe is my first ever Amtrak ride. It is a little different... My "reserved" seat was hand-written on a slip of green paper and seemed somewhat arbitrary. Bit the seats are comfy, there's plenty of legroom, and my neighbor's snores aren't too loud. ;)

Air travel is hell... but O'Hare is heavenly

Okay so it's not hell. But why do I always end up next to the hulking guy with no personal space issues? Why is his elbow a good three inches across the arm rest? It's a damn good thing that I don't want to watch anything, because his arm is pressing down on the volume control, which would be deafening if I had headphones in...

Of course, perhaps that would lessen the annoying tinny "oontz oontz oontz" coming out of his crappy headphones RIGHT NEXT TO MY HEAD.

Just once I want to sit next to someone else who thinks, wow, space is tight, I'll try to keep to myself and not press against the person next to me. Rowr.

Luckily this is the short flight -- this is just 90 minutes from beautiful O'Hare airport to Raleigh-Durham airport. A few minutes to get above 10,000 feet, a drink service, a cleanup round, and then we'lre headed back down. Then the real fun begins.

But back to O'Hare, which is quite possibly my favorite airport in the US. It's freakishly clean -- even the bathrooms are a delight. And who doesn't love the little tubular plastic covers on the toilet seats? In my brief stopover I grabbed a hummus and veggie wrap -- I figured this might be my last opportunity to eat fresh vegetables for a while! Of course, Wil later reminded me about the awesome veggie dogs we had one time through... as well as the mighty fine pizza we had another time. Well, maybe on the way home...

My favorite part of the airport is the "giant pinball machine" tunnel between concourses B and C. I love the neon, the music, the lighting on the walls. It's always a pleasure to go through it, whether I'm in a hurry or just taking my time, like I did today.

I'm en route to the Bronto Summit, where I am... gulp... presenting tomorrow. I'm feeling pretty nervous about it, but I've been practicing my presentation today and it's getting better. I think Steve, my Bronto strategist, is actually the one doing the heavy lifting -- he's talking about the metrics and the nuts and bolts about how we set up all of the campaigns... I just get to show off the creative parts and talk about Brooks.

The hotel where the conference is being held is the Washington Duke Inn and Golf Club (sit up straight when you say that!), which looks pretty lush. I'm looking forward to getting to the hotel and maybe going for a little shake-out run on the cross-country course that skirts the edge of the golf course. A nice 5K might be just the thing to work out the kinks from my compressed day. Plus it will take the edge off before i go to the "partner reception" where there will hopefully be some vegetarian food on offer. If not, I guess it's Red Vines for dinner. ;)