Hola

"Out in the west Texas town of El Paso..."

Ah, yes. The dust. The heat. The lack of a neighboring city of any size. It can only be El Paso. In reality, El Paso is merely where I've chosen to sleep this week. I'm actually spending my days, starting Wednesday, in our factory in sunny Juarez, Mexico just across the border.

Imagine...Ten Chinese guys, three Americans, and a factory full of Mexicans. It has the makings of the perfect "buddy comedy."

"Follow the zany hijinks of Kwon-Foo "Jerome" Chen, Bret Hawkins, and Javier Blanco as they inhibit production on an entire product line for a major manufacturer. There'll be laughs (mostly bodily in nature), there'll be tears (mostly by company management), and there will be the potential for an international incident. Tune in."

I departed Indy this afternoon at around 3:00pm. I boarded a small plane for a relatively long trip across the middle of the country to my stopover in Houston. There were a couple of notable oddities about the flight, or rather its patrons, that give a picture of how my afternoon went.

First, soon after we took off from Indy, the plane began to smell as though someone had used their colostomy bag as a whoopee cushion. It was really awful. My flights to Hong Kong have rendered me less than sensitive to the smell contained within an airplane seat cushion during a long distance flight, but this was, possibly literally, a whole different animal.

The second item of note was that the gentleman sitting across from me had a monocle. He also had "normal" glasses, but occasionally he would remove them in favor of the shiek Inspector Clouseau look. Where do these people hide in "real life?" I haven't recently encountered anyone with a monocle outside of The Count on Sesame Street. (Sniffle...I miss my boy...)

I'm now awaiting my, already delayed, flight to the land of taco shells -- El Paso. I sat down for dinner during my wait when the gentlemen across from me said a swear in my general direction and then tried to hide. I gunned him down with a stare, and he confessed:

Airport Dude -- "What are you eating?"
Me -- "Uh, a 'stuffed' slice of pizza."
Airport Dude -- "I've never seen anything like that. Is it normally eaten with your hands?"
Me -- "In an airport, surrounded by the likes of you, it is."

I was incensed. Luckily the gentleman departed before I ate a giant chocolate chip cookie and slice of key lime pie.

Bret + Long Layover + Expense Account = B I N G E

More when I cross the bridge tomorrow...