Never let it be said that business travel isn’t sometimes adventurous. It is especially adventurous when you’re somewhat fearless and have no idea WTF you are doing or where you are going. That would sum up my trip to Chicago for the Pittsburgh Conference. I’m not sure when this little event took place, late eighties maybe early nineties. The Pittsburgh Conference is an analytical instrumentation show. Prior to moving it to the McCormic Convention Center in Chicago every other year, it had always been held in New Orleans. At the time, I was the Marketing Services Manager for Millipore’s Analytical Division, and was attending the show to conduct a Press Breakfast and work the booth.

But first, we had to get there and that proved to be a challenge right from the get go. The guy who worked for me, Brian, and I left on a Saturday morning so that we could go to the convention center and supervise the booth assembly.  We only had forty feet of booth space, small for us in comparison to other shows, but it was a key market for both our HPLC sample prep filters and our lab water purification systems.

I know that we were flying right after some type of international terrorist event, so it was particularly touchy going through the gate. So, here we are standing in line and the woman in front of me sets off the alarms. I’m thinking. Okay, this will be simple. The problem was that she kept setting off the alarm. First, they had her remove all her jewelry, including her earrings. She still set off the alarm. Then, her belt. She still set off the alarm. Then, they asked her to remove her shoes. That’s when my alarm went off. Why?

Maybe because I had a quarter ounce of hooch in my shoe. I remember turning around to Brian, “Hey, I need to get the fuck out of this line.”

“Why?”

“Because I stuck the ganja in my shoe.”

“Yeah, in your sock, right?”

“No, in my shoe. I didn’t have time to put it in my sock.”

He was very comforting, “Oh, then you’re screwed.”

Yeah, thanks, Brian. What a pal. I was at the point of no return, however. The woman had finally cleared the security check. It was my turn. After all that sweating, I cleared it the first time. Don’t ask me why I didn’t set off alarms, but the best part of all was that Brian did. Yeah, sometimes I love payback, man.

The flight was pretty uneventful and it was, as unusual as it sounds, right on schedule. We got to Chicago and got settled into the hotel. Then, we headed over to the McCormick Convention Center to check on the progress of the booth assembly, and go through a dry run of the press briefing. The booth looked great so far. There were no problems there. But I have to tell you the worst thing about working with tekkies is that they just don’t get what kind of material to present to editors. These guys were writers, not chromatography scientists. I can’t tell you how many times I tried to drill that into their heads before the trade show. Now, I was at the trade show going through the dry run and they were editorializing again.

It started with the first guy. He started his portion of the presentation and made it so complicated I wanted to just tell him to STFU and let me do it. I remember telling him to stop, and then I told him if he went into this kind of an explanation half of the editors in the room would stand up and walk out. I remember saying, “Just tell them in layman’s terms what the products do and the benefit to the customer.”  That’s all they need to know. Every editor in the room would be given a package of detail, a copy of the presentation, and access to one-on-one discussions with the scientists in the room while they ate breakfast. Still, they insisted on cultivating what I like to call the deer-in-the-headlight effect.

After two hours of this torture, Brian and I headed out to dinner with Ed Black, the sales manager from Analytical Chemistry magazine. Ed was one of my best friends even though we were on opposite ends of the political spectrum. He was a true conservative from Georgia, now living in Connecticut. His wife Lynn was an airline stewardess, and she was just an awesome person. She was so funny and quick witted. We were close enough on the friendship scale that I’d go to Connecticut and spend the weekend. We had one rule: He and I never discussed politics. But that didn’t mean we didn’t jab each other good naturedly once in a while. We surely did.

I remember we got home in the early morning hours and we were wasted. Nevertheless, we had a free day Sunday. The only thing we had scheduled was a three o’clock review of the hospitality suite set up and a meeting with the convention center support staff. Brian and I made plans to go to this great flea market we saw in the local paper.

Our second close call: WTF were we thinking?

Brian and I ate breakfast and immediately hit the road. We hailed a cab and told the driver where we wanted to go. “Are you sure?” I guess I was kind of puzzled by his question.

“Yeah, we’re sure. Let’s go,” was my response.

When the driver had gotten us to our requested drop off point, he turned around and said to me, “Are you sure you want to be here? I’m not sure I should leave you here.”

We looked around. It looked perfectly fine to us. I replied, “Yeah, we’re good.”

I paid the driver and he drove off. We started heading down the street toward where the flea market was supposed to be when we saw this gang across the street with baseball bats. Yeah, that was comforting. The fact that they were looking at us was also comforting.

So, Brian and I started walking. “Can you see that they are walking with us across the street?”

“Yeah, Brian, I can see that.”

“You know, we’re dead meat.”

At that point, we started looking for somewhere safe to hide. Brian first suggested the church. I thought that might be a bad idea. Aside from the fact that I hadn’t been in a church for about a hundred years and was afraid of it collapsing, it didn’t seem like there was any action going on there and the doors might be locked. So, we started looking for any open stores we could find. We were sure we’d be safe there. Brian found, of all places, a hat shop. We talked about it for a few minutes, then the two of us broke into a hell-bent run and managed to get ourselves into the shop safely. We explained to the shop keeper what was going on and he started laughing.

“This isn’t a good place for you two. Don’t believe everything you read in the papers. This may be an ordinary flea market, but this is not a safe part of town. The gangs don’t bother the shopkeepers, but they like to victimize visitors to the city.”

He was a really nice guy. He called a cab for us and told him to pick us up at the back of his shop. As fate would have it, the driver was the same guy who had dropped us off. When he saw us, he laughed.

“I told you, man, that I couldn’t figure out why you wanted to get out here. I don’t even like driving in here.”

We sat in the back seat and, once we were safely out of there, Brian and I started laughing. “How many days are we here for?”

I looked at him. “We’re here through Wednesday, why?”

“I can’t wait to see what other kind of trouble we can get ourselves into,” he responded.

On Sunday, before flying out to Strasbourg, Louise and I hooked up with another co-worker, the vice president of the Intertech Division. We’ll call him Allen. He was just a down to earth guy. He got along with Louise and I, so we expected to have a great time. He had wheels and we had ideas. We started by heading off to the Arch de Triomphe. Now, picture this. Allen and Louise in front in this little Renault. I’m in the back. So, Allen says, “Louise, hang out the window with this video camera when I enter the traffic circle.” (By the way, the photo is an aerial view of the traffic circle.)  There’s no entering the circle slowly, so Allen just floored it and blew in, with Louise hanging out the window filming traffic in the circle, waving wildly including a few waves at the police. She was laughing so hard, she almost lost the camera.

We found a place to park, and visited the Tuileries and the Louvre. The Louvre is a very weird place. It’s almost quiet, even though it’s full of visitors and you can hear the faint buzz of conversation. But everybody’s talking quietly and respectfully. We walk into this room and stop in front of Venus de Milo and Louise blurts out, “They call this art? It doesn’t have any arms!” Allen and I had a buzz on and we just burst out laughing.  He leaned over to Louise very slowly and said, “Louise, shut up.” And then we started laughing again. It was just unbelievable. Eventually Louise settled down and we made it through the museum successfully.

Louise, Allen and I ate at the Hard Rock Cafe in Paris, then we headed out to the airport for our hour flight to Strasbourg and short drive to Molsheim where our meetings would begin the next morning. We’d have more adventures there!

Assault on Strasbourg

We arrived in Strasbourg and Louise rented a car, another mutant little Renault like the one Allen had rented in Paris. We immediately drove to the Hotel Diana. We had to get to sleep before the morning meetings and we were both wiped out. There’s a story behind the Hotel Diana. It was owned by the family of Dominique Baly, who just happened to be a vice president of Millipore. To say that the company got great rates was an understatement. In return, the Hotel Diana received repeat and regular business. During the 80s, we were sending a lot of people back and forth from the Molsheim plant. The Hotel Diana was getting a lot of business. We were continually running into people we knew in the lobby. the ride there was uneventful. We parked the car, took our luggage and headed up to our rooms where we promptly fell asleep.

We had meetings all day Monday, then we returned to the hotel for a nap. We would be going out with the European communications director that evening. Here’s where Louise’s excellent driving adventure began. We went back to the plant to pick up Dieter about seven. Louise was driving too fast as she came into the parking lot and immediately drove the car into a ditch. Of course, right in front of the very large glass windows for everyone to see. It required a very large tow truck to get the car back out of the ditch and, mercifully, Dieter drove that evening.

We were in the French countryside now. There were small villages and we spent the first few hours driving through some of the more interesting villages and sampling different wines. The food was also completely different than the food we had in Paris. Here, the food was not as sophisticated. There were more hearty offerings, like stews and coq au vin. And dogs could eat at the table in restaurants here in Oz. That would be Louise’s next flash point. We walked into a dark restaurant and sat down. It would take a few minutes for Louise to see the small family with the dog right next to us. The dog was sitting at the table and eating with everyone else. She finally saw it.  Here’s how the conversation went:

L: Are you kidding me?

D: What?

L: There’s a dog over there. That’s totally unsanitary. I’m out of here. There’s no way I’m eating here.

D: I beg to differ with you. You are indeed eating here. Cut the shit, Louise. When in Rome…

L: I’m not in Rome. I’m in France and these people are disgusting.

This went on for several minutes, and then she finally settled down. She even ate there and enjoyed her meal.

The meetings ended on Wednesday and we were scheduled to fly back on Friday. We had Thursday as a personal day, so Louise and I decided to head into Strasbourg to do a little touring. We parked the car in a lot and headed out on foot. The first sign that this would not be a normal day was the moment that Louise got trapped inside a port-a-potty. The ones in France were incredible. They were like little roadside toilets. Well, Louise locked herself in but couldn’t get herself out. First she was upset, then she started laughing hysterically. When this started, the whole thing started rocking and the two of us were in the middle of Strasbourg laughing. I finally got her to calm down and she managed to figure out how to use the inside lock. She got out, thankfully.

We spent the rest of the day just hanging out in this very interesting town. We decided to catch an late afternoon dinner so that we could get back to the hotel early and get some sleep before flying out on Friday. To say that Strasbourg was beautiful would be an understatement. It really was. The atmosphere was very different from Paris. We were in the French countryside fairly close to Germany. The prices in the shops were much more reasonable and the people a hell of a lot friendlier.

Unfortunately, may of the parking lots and your access to them look the same. When it was finally time to go back to the car, neither one of us could figure out where the hell we parked it. We spent an hour on foot before giving up and deciding to head to the police station. These guys were great. They volunteered to drive us to each parking lot until we found the car. We got into an old Renault with the policiers. Louise sat in the front and I ended up in the back seat sitting on a milk crate. And they drove like fucking maniacs. We were bouncing all over the place. About an hour later, we found the right parking lot and they dropped us off at the car.

We got back to the Hotel Diana just fine and Louise managed to park the car without falling into a ditch. We slept well and headed out the next morning. I had a blast, but it was good to be going home again.

Ah, yes. There’s business travel, then there’s business travel. I have made several business trips to Paris in my lifetime (all for Millipore) and some of the experiences have been more outrageous than others. One one trip, I went with Louise. She had been the department secretary, but had recently been promoted to International Promotions Coordinator and was now working for me.  The trip would be in two parts, first we’d spend a few days in Paris at meetings then we were scheduled to fly to Strasbourg and drive out to our offices in Molsheim for the rest of the week before flying home. Instead of flying out on a Sunday, Louise and I decided to leave on Friday night and spend the weekend in Paris. To say that I have a bad taste in my mouth for the French would be accurate, but I know that’s because I had great misfortune in my career at the hands of some of the biggest assholes on the planet. They just happened to be French assholes. I have to say that Paris is one beautiful city and, for the most part, the people are charming. (Except the waiter in that outdoor cafe on one trip who didn’t get a freakin’ tip because he was just plain rude.)

I’m not going to lie to you. When you traveled for Millipore, you traveled well. They always put you up in the best places. On this trip, we were staying at the Trianon Palace Hotel at Versailles. It was a beautiful place, there’s no question about it. There’s also no question that Louise was a whack job to travel with and her first point of excitement was the bidet in the room.  Originally, I told her that you were supposed to wash your clothes in it. At first she took me seriously. Then she looked at me and said, “No sir. Right?” It was then that I explained what it was to her in my own peculiar fashion. “It’s something used by cultures who don’t belive in showering every day. And it’s not for your feet.” She finally ‘got it’ and then you couldn’t get her off the stupid thing. It was like a three-year-old with a new toy and, after a while, you just had to wonder.

I remember vividly that Louise woke me up pretty early on Saturday morning. I can remember the conversation pretty vividly too, and I was still more than half asleep.

L: Hey, are you awake?

D: Sort of.

L: What’s that noise?

D: Sheep.

L: Here?

D: They have sheep in France. Where do you think they got the phrase, “Tete de mouton?”

L: But here?

D: What do you mean, here?

L: At a hotel?

D: This is France. They do things differently here. Hell, they could be staying here. Who knows.

L: Well, I don’t think they should have barnyard animals on hotel grounds. It’s disturbing to wake up to that sound.

Louise was funny that way. Animals were, of course, subhuman and, therefore, not allowed in certain places. Louise’s animal rule no. 1: No barnyard animals on hotel grounds. Unfortunately, the Trianon Palace didn’t see it that way and sent the sheep out to graze directly under our window. We would have Louise’s animal rule no. 2 later in the trip.

Once people talk me awake, there’s no hope of my returning to sleep. As it is, I require very little even at my advanced age. I’ve been like that all my life. The sun was just coming up, so I decided to sit up and read. I remember I had brought this great Rita Mae Brown book with me, “Six of One.” A lot of people think of “Rubyfruit Jungle” when they think of Rita Mae, but “Six of One” was my absolute favorite book by her. But I digress. Adult ADHD.

Anyway, I read and then I ordered breakfast. I’m not much of a breakfast eater, but the continental breakfast at Parisian hotels is right up my alley. Simple. Really strong coffee (Louise called it Mud in a Cup) and hard rolls with butter. Simple. I have to be in the mood for eggs (and the wacky thing about that is that I never seem to be in the mood for eggs in the morning), and cereal is boring. Louise smelled the coffee and decided to wake up and then she ordered breakfast. Then, it was time to shower and head out to see what we could see.

First stop, Versailles itself. All I can say is, “Wow!” I mean, this place was immense and ornate and incredible. You know, I have a limited memory of the inside of this place, but the gardens were just beautiful. It was pretty warm when we took this trip, even though I can’t remember for the life of me what month it took place.  I think it might have been late Spring or early summer because the gardens were in full bloom.  I’m glad we saw the inside first because had we started in the gardens, I may never have made it to see the inside. We walked around the gardens in the sun for what had to be at least an hour just talking. Then, we decided to hit Paris.

We knew other Millipore people would be arriving in the evening, so we decided to skip car rentals for now. We opted for the Metro, and what an adventure. We were two obviously American tourists without a command of the French language on the Paris Metro. Now, mind you that I took seven years of French. Seven. I could understand it when spoken to, but do not ask me to speak it back with any kind of proficiency. Louise, of course, had her phrase book which would prove to be totally ineffective. We were clearly winging it and going for broke, but we finally made it. The first thing Louise wanted to do was the Eiffel Tower. I had been to the tower twice before, but Louise had never been. Can’t do Paris without doing the Eiffel Tower. We went all the way to the top and, man, was it windy. It’s always windy up there, but it was incredibly windy on this day and, while it was warm on the ground, we were freezing up there.

We spent the rest of the day there walking the Champs Elysee, going in and out of stores. That’s not my idea of how to explore a great city like Paris, but some people just can’t stop shopping. In all fairness, shopping was what the Champs Elysee was all about; I’m just not interested in fashion and junk like that. I can do that at home. I wasn’t going to argue on this count because I had plans for after lunch and I was just going to take Louise where I wanted to go without asking her. We at lunch at a restaurant on the Champs Elysee called Hippopotamus. Then, it was my turn.

I paid the tab, hailed a cab and grabbed Louise. “Come on. Let’s go. I have a plan.”

Spending the afternoon in Montmartre

We jumped in a cab and I told the driver to take us to Montmartre. The French cabbies are radical. We somehow got stuck in nasty Saturday traffic in Paris, so the guy just drove over the median strip in the middle of the road and went a different way. He did it right in front of a policeman and the guy didn’t even blink. One thing’s for certain, we got there quickly and didn’t waste any time hanging out in traffic.

If somebody told me I was going to Paris and the only place I could visit was Montmartre, that would be just fine with me. It’s the one part of Paris I might even consider living in. If you go to Paris and do not visit Montmartre, then shame on you. It’s wonderful. It’s loaded with artists and scuptors, galleries, restaurants and shops that have all kinds of offbeat stuff. I’ve always been into places like that — Provincetown and The French Quarter in New Orleans come to mind. They are two of my favorite places. And Quebec City — but the old Quebec City behind the walls — not the other side.

I told Louise the best way to take in Montmartre was to forget the maps they give you at the souvenir shops. Just walk around. You’ll find everything. The first place I took her was to the famous steps. They are on every postcard and poster in the city. In fact, I bought a poster of it myself on my last trip to Paris. I had it framed when I got home and it was at home hanging in my apartment in Melrose. Yeah, I was working in the corporate world and I was doing great, but I really am not a corporate type. I was successful at Millipore at the time I was there because it was a pretty cool company at the time. I did things my way. They didn’t give a damn because I just got it done. I really still wanted to be an artist, and I know that’s why places like Montmartre turn me on. Still do.

Louise was pretty hooked from the get-go as well. We spent hours there just walking around and taking things in. We talked to a few artists and shop keepers. These folks were pretty down-to-earth. They had no problem conversing with you in English if need be, which is very different from the downtown Parisians. I find there’s great disdain for Americans there, and I’m not sure it’s unfounded. We do tend to have that swaggering American attitude even though the European culture has been around a lot longer. I’m told it’s worse now since France refused to help in Iraq. No doubt you remember those nasty bumperstickers “Iraq first. Then France.” Sometimes American humor is decidedly not funny. And France was right, by the way.

We ate dinner in Montmartre. I can’t remember the name of the restaurant for the life of me, but I know I grossed Louise out by eating snails for an appetizer. Hey, I like snails. What can I say? I grew up eating Perriwinkles (anybody but me remember those?). Perhaps the most famous structure in Montmartre is the Sacre Coeur Cathedral. I told Louise we couldn’t leave for the hotel until we saw it. It is just beautiful, as I’m sure you’ll agree. After we toured the inside, we decided it was time to get back since we were taking the Metro. Didn’t want to travel around like fools in the dark. Besides, tomorrow, more people were arriving and we had plans to finish off Paris before heading to Strasbourg and Molsheim.

Unfortunately, you will have to wait for Deuxieme partie. Ha!

I was never much a fan of business travel. I always thought it was overrated. The only good thing about it was that you kind of got to preview a place before you ended up spending your own money traveling there. My absolute favorite business travel destination? Well, it was neither Paris, nor the French countryside. It was not London. It was not Germany. It wasn’t San Francisco or D.C., although I absolutely love both places and they are probably both the only places outside of Massachusetts that I’d ever live. It was New Orleans, a place I’d probably never live.

Yes, I have a good friend who will tell you what a swill-bucket existence it is in New Orleans, and I am sure this is particularly true post-Katrina. In fact, one of the most vivid images I have in my head happens to be a huge poster in the French Quarter that displayed the differences in pay, crime, poverty rate, etc., between New Orleans and Boston. The numbers told the ugly story. However, if you are an outsider visiting New Orleans, you have an entirely different perspective because you don’t have to live there.

I may not want to live there, but partying there was a trip. You could work all damned day at a trade show, have to go to dinner with the ’suits’ at night, and you could still get some decent partying hours in. That is particularly true of the French Quarter which simply never shuts down. Leave a drink behind because you’re late for dinner? Unheard of. The bartenders in the hotels simply poured them into a plastic cup so you could finish your drink in the cab on the way to the restaurant.

There were always things going on at night. Some of the publishers would have parties on river boats with gambling; others would have buffet dinners with an open bar in their hotel meeting rooms. I preferred to hang out with my favorite sales people one-on-one because you’d actually get out and see the town. My absolute favorite sales guy was a guy named Ed from a publication called Analytical Chemistry. Ed and I couldn’t have been more different. He was a conservative from “the great state of Georgia,” and I was (and still am) a liberal from Massachusetts. We simply didn’t let it get in the way of our friendship. We never talked about politics.

Every time we’d go to New Orleans for the Pittsburgh Conference, Ed and I end up at  Commander’s Palace in the Garden District.  At the time, the head chef there was a guy named Emeril LeGasse — now one of my all-time favorite chefs. A couple of times we went to Brennan’s for breakfast and, if we did lunch instead of dinner, we loved the food at the Hard Rock Cafe. It was definitely New Orleans style food and the memorabilia in the place was regionalized as well — like Fats Domino’s piano top hanging on the wall, one of Doctor John’s outfits in a glass case above the entrance, or videos of Professor Longhair playing away in the background.

No bad food in New Orleans

Regardless of the size of the place, there is no bad food in New Orleans. If you love food, this is the place to be. I had my first alligator dish there; it was alligator sausages at breakfast one day in the French Quarter. It was a really small place and I cannot remember the name of  it. I liked it so much that I ended up having it stir fried at a Szechuan restaurant in Jackson Square and had the famous “alligator on a stick” at the French Market.

The Sheraton I stayed at on one trip celebrated Happy Hour by putting a row boat in the middle of the lobby bar filled with boiled crawfish and handing out free bottles of Blackened Voodoo Beer for the first hour. It was just awesome. In fact, Beth and I went on one trip together by train (this trip is one that deserves its own post, and it will get one down the road) and we made sure to stay at the same Sheraton.

On one trip, about fifteen of us were determined to eat at K-Paul’s. Paul Prudhomme is the grandaddy of cajun cooking. The lines outside his restaurant were legendary. They could extend the full length of the street, and you would wait for hours. As soon as we saw the line forming in the early afternoon, we pulled someone off booth duty and told them to stand in line so that we could get in when the place opened at 5:30 p.m. It worked perfectly. We ran over there after the show and were seated by about 6:30 p.m. There’s no flash in K-Paul’s. It’s rustic with family-style seating. We all got to sit together at one table, so we ordered a bucket of Cajun Martinis. I had the most amazing blackened yellowfin tuna I’ve ever had, and Paul Prudhomme was there that night. I still have the menu he signed and gave me. I also bought his first cookbook there on that trip. It’s one of my favorites.

The real fun started later

I never worried much about being gay at Millipore. (Well, let’s put it this way: I wasn’t worried at this time. I found that I had to worry later, once the Europeans took over.) I was pretty much out and headed for the bars after hours. Some of the Millipore revelers even came once in a while. If you’re gay, it’s not hard to find a place to party in New Orleans. A must see is Cafe Lafitte in Exile on Bourbon Street, which just happens to be the oldest gay bar in America. But things could get much more interesting than that late at night in New Orleans.

If you wanted to blow somebody’s mind, you took them to The Dungeon on Toulouse Street. The Dungeon was not necessarily a gay bar in the true sense of the word, but plenty of gay people frequented The Dungeon. This place was just amazing. Hell, it didn’t open until 10:30 p.m. Trust me when I tell you that your first trip there would amount to you walking around with your mouth open for what seemed to be hours. According to legend, the dungeon was where Prince Suleman of Turkey lured young women and prepared them for the harems of Istanbul by “psychological indoctrination, opium-induced submission and torture.”  I could spend hours describing it, so instead I’ll just rely on the link to tell the story. Besides, you get pictures.

For some stupid reason I’ll never understand, they decided to change the venue of the Pittsburgh Conference so that it rotated between Chicago and New Orleans, so the trips to New Orleans slowed down. However, on one of the final trips I made, I took Beth with me and we wrapped some vacation time around the business trip. That allowed us to take the train all the way to New Orleans. It was a blast. That story is coming up soon.

(Oh, yeah, I had a freakin’ ass kicking experience in Chicago once at this show as well. I’ll have to tell you about it some time.)