Brian's Day Out in Marfil

Where is Marfil you ask? Is that some new overnight? Well, I've been at this location probably 20 times in the last two months alone. Marfil is the technical location of the crew hotel for the Guanajuato overnight. The whole setup can be confusing because the airport is labeled as "Leon" on the departure boards, while the airport is actually in a city called Silao, and the hotel is in Marfil despite its own description as being in Guanajuato. Muy complicado. Anyway, I feel like I have done pretty much every museum in the city of Guanajuato, so I couldn't motivate myself to get in a cab again.

I elected to stay in Marfil, which unlike Guanajuato is not a UNESCO heritage site, but is home to various car dealerships, convenience stores, and an Applebee's (which I have been repeatedly warned to never eat at). Quite often my lunch consists of some packaged carbs purchased at the Oxxo mini mart.

After my "lunch," I decided to walk around the neighborhood a little bit, just to get my legs moving and hopefully encourage my body to be tired enough to fall asleep early enough to prepare myself for another early morning flight tomorrow. While the buildings in Marfil do not possess the same kind of colorful architecture as its neighbor, it is not completely without its charms. I eventually stopped at a small park outside a church to sit for a spell before heading back to the Holiday Inn Express.

It was a mostly safe walk except for a tunnel I had to walk through. The sidewalk did continue inside the tunnel with ample room, but I was more concerned about the ventilation as I did not see any fans to move the air around. Luckily it was a short tunnel and I was soon paralleling the Carrera/highway by the hotel once again.

For dinner I stuck with the flight crew staple of tacos just down the street. It is a very unassuming place. The kind of place your mother would frown upon, but it is quite safe.

The kitchen is within full view and despite having just three walls and a tin roof, it is kept quite clean. I do not know anyone on a flight crew who has gotten sick from eating food in Mexico, unless it was Applebee's.

The captain and I were offered meals during the red-eye last night and immediately declined. Airline food can be a gamble sometimes, and I speak from firsthand experience. I was taken out by a beef wrap a few months back. As the captain later stated, "I feel a lot safer eating street food in Mexico than the salmon in the first-class meals."

Words to live by.

A Relaxing Workday

After a stressful week during which Nicole and I had to figure out how we were going to move out of our current residence due to some pretty intense fumigation of the entire complex. With that and wedding planning stress building up, I had a trip with a long layover in Palm Springs and found it a perfect time to get away from it all and just enjoy the 90 degrees and sun while the rest of the country gets snow dumped on it.


Nicole accompanied me for this trip and after arriving late last night, we got breakfast at Sherman's Deli across the street for some omelettes. After that we walked around the downtown area for a bit, checked out a couple of the stores, and then walked into the Palm Springs Museum of Art, which was simultaneously marked "free" and also "$12." We ignored the second sign. We didn't spend much time in it, but checked out the Andy Warhol section. Nicole has always been partial to Campbell's Soup.

From there we checked out the rest of town, which seemed to consist of elderly folk and young kids roaming around aimlessly. Nicole stumbled across a statue of her idol, Lucy Ricardo. Lucy was also the namesake of Nicole's childhood guinea pig.

After returning to the hotel, we sat out by the pool for a while and came to the conclusion that nobody is in school today. There were a lot of kids for a Tuesday. Evidently spring break is still happening.









After this very taxing day of sitting in the sun, I had to go to work. Somewhat surprisingly, the most direct way to go from Palm Springs to Los Angeles in the evening is through San Francisco. Nicole narrowly got on the plane. I assume we can thank some geriatrics who were struggling to get their rascal through security and missed the flight. Nicole got the last seat on the plane.

Then in SFO, we had a three hour layover to do some more sitting. While we were eating a dinner from Klein's Deli, we spied Chris Christie, former governor of New Jersey, ordering a pizza next door. He looked like a sad shadow of his former self. The imagery of a large man in a fleece ordering a pizza in Terminal 3 is disheartening enough, but knowing that he was once one of the most powerful governors in the country is sad. I actually felt bad for him. But we musn't let former NJ governors bring us down. Nicole and I had a fine trip to a city that is a mere 2 (maybe 4?) huor drive from LA.