In the restroom of a random bar by the Connecticut River near Hartford.

First time in Hartford, CT airport.

The airport was dead – and I mean dead dead – when I landed. And it was not even 10 PM!! Curiously it is called “Bradley International Airport”. I was wondering about that International bit. Looked up every single flight that leaves or comes in to this airport. All 27 of them.

The only one that qualifies – kinda – is a Frontier flight to/from Puerto Rico. That is not even “international” in the sense you do not have to do customs or immigration.

That is a bit of stretching, I say!

Beautiful view of the largest river in the Northwest from the airplane. As best as I can tell, that angular dam in the middle of the picture, is the Rocky Reach Dam – famous for being the first dam to be designed to let young fish have a bypass to find their way to the ocean.

Every time I park my car in a new city or for that matter in places in Atlanta and I have to pay my parking fees thru yet another parking meter app…

… they taketh away with the other.

After 2 not-so-happy experience with rental cars this week, the third one – where I switched from Avis to Hertz – worked like a charm.

But then again, the flight karma caught up with me in the fifth and last fight for the week. Switched from Delta to Alaska airlines and promptly had a mechanical problem in Seattle!

3 hours later we are threatening to re-board in a new plane.

Let’s see where this one ends up!

A hot tub boat!

The lower picture is from a boat in Lake Union (Seattle). Note the small boat just to right of the edge of the boom.

The upper picture is magnified (poor quality picture due to the distance and cloudy Seattle weather).

It is basically a floating hot tub! Not sure what the fuel is but you can see the chimney and it was emitting very light dark smoke. People were just floating away in their hot tubs surrounded by the 64 degree cold water of Lake Union!

That is the mark of classy bar. The ice has not an iota of trapped air in it – making it completely transparent inside the drink. The branding of the restaurant name – RPM – on top was a nice touch too.

Oh! The Old Fashioned was nothing to scoff at either!!

Dinner with office folks by the riverside.

Somehow, the systems in Avis did not think so.

This was a bad Avis karma week for me. At Charlotte, instead of walking into a car, I had to wait in a queue 32 people strong – that too in the preferred center! The normal Avis line had way more. Ultimately decided on Uber.

And then faced the above fiasco in Chicago the next day. Again had to wait in a queue to get it resolved.

I am sure, by now, you have spotted the problem.