South Carolina Weekend, Episode I
Miriam and I took a long weekend to visit our future home: Columbia, SC. Miriam will be going to grad school (more specifically, to earn an MBA in International Business), and I will, as I so ambiguously put it to several people during the weekend, “doing something.” Which means working in some capacity, some position. It is only for six months or so, and then we’re off to Morocco, where I’ll face the same question (but an answer there is clearer: TEFL).
We left early Thursday, on a crowded Delta flight from San Diego to the Cincinnati airport, which is actually in North Kentucky, which is actually cold as shit. The temperature was surely somewhere in the single digits. We had to leave the building to get from one terminal (concourse) to the other (via a bus that zoomed across the tarmac). From there it was an hour flight in a smaller plane (probably just as full, but with only 2 seats to each side of the aisles).
The plane touched down at Columbia Metropolitan Airport, which is not so much metropolitan, but recently renovated, it seems. We are met there by a banner welcoming Moore School Fellowship attendees, and a student representative who was there to give us a ride to the hotel, but we had other plans: operation rent-a-car. Enterprise, true to their word, came and picked us up. I get the feeling that this is their motto because they're never located right at the airport - their locations always seem to be in a small strip mall, at arms length from any port of call. We were greeted at the rental car office by a very harried gentleman whose anxiousness, we would find out upon drop-off, was due to renting out cars to the Clinton campaign - a group who would, in an transparent act of soreloserness (not a word? it is now!), would leave their cars strewn across the CMA (Columbia Met. Airport, not the Country Music Awards) property, keys in ignition and GPS units pilfered.
We were upgraded from “economy” to something like “standard” or “full size,” due to lack of “economy” - an increasing problem across the country these days, it seems. Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I think I might have been more comfortable with the “economy” car (or an upgrade way up to “cute ute”…is there a “cute ute” rent-a-car category?), because what we were given was a Pontiac G6, which is way too big of a car for me. I don’t think I ever got the rear view mirrors, nor the drivers seat, positioned just right.
The drive to the hotel was a bit confusing. The guy at Enterprise said to just make a left out onto the street the office was on, and that went straight into downtown. The only problem was that there were several times when the street would merge with other streets and take on new directions and…my God…I’ve never seen so may U.S. Highways in one place.
A digression: in all of California, there are only a modicum of the original U.S. Highway system left. Most people are keenly aware of the 101 (Oregon to L.A.). A fair amount are probably familiar with the 50 (Sacramento to Nevada) or the 395 (Victorville to Oregon, with a brief sojourn into Nevada). There are only four more: 6, 95, 97, 199 - none of which tally much more than a hundred miles of California terrain. As you look on a map, and head east, you do notice that the US Hwy. signs become more plentiful. And then they get into this nasty habit of having up to three signed highways on a single road. I mean…WTF, transportation departments of the east coast?
So we arrive at the hotel, no problem, passing some very tall ladies in white and blue jersies as we enter the lobby. We check in at the front desk - our room is not ready yet, as a Kentucky women’s basketball team was just on their way out, and housekeeping hadn’t had time yet to clean up after most of them. Well, here we are with our bags and card keys to a dirty room, and a dinner date in 20 minutes. We asked them if we could just store our bags in the room, as we’d be out to dinner for an hour or three…and the room would be cleaned by then? “Oh, yeah, that’s no problem,” we were told. So we left our bags in the room, in what seemed to us an obvious manner of togetherness and separation from the mess in the funky-smelling room. We hit up the lobby restroom and then met up with the other Moore school peeps and piled into a van, heading for dinner.
Dinner was at Liberty Tap Room and Grill - an easily duplicated in any city bar & grill with occasional live music. Most of the cuisine was…dare I say it…Californian (gourmet burgers, woodfired pizzas, pastas, the like), except for an interesting appetizer of homemade potato chips smothered in blue cheese. Miriam and I were advised to try the shrimp and grits - which turned out was sort of a jumbalaya over grits, and was very good. Thus began my love of grits.
Okay, I only had grits one more time - breakfast on our last day - but I did come home craving it.
Dinner was finished, the van was refilled with a heavier set of people, and we returned whence we came - the Inn at USC. Yes, the hotel where Miriam and I would approach our room’s door, only to see it slightly ajar, and upon inside inspection, still mostly unkempt and minus our luggage. We high-tailed it to the front desk and asked as calmly as one can when their attire for the next several days has gone missing. Their response, “Oh, that’s your luggage?” Our luggage? Yes, our luggage which you said we could set down in the room. Apparently, housekeeping thought it was the previous occupants’ bags, and they were stowed in the office behind the front desk. What they didn’t have an answer for was why the room was still not completely cleaned. What ensued was a ineffectual and unimpressive show of finger-pointing between the front desk clerks and the housekeeping staff. In the meantime, we retrieved our bags and set up shop in part of the lobby. As we waited, an attempt was made to tranquilize our ill-feelings towards the hotel: two coupons for a free appetizer at Mr. Friendly’s (a local eatery in the Five Points district…which we never ended up going to). But do free appetizers really make up for nearly giving us a heart attack and not having a room ready at nearly 9 pm? I’m not inclined to say it is. So, a couple minutes later, we’re offered an actual olive branch (rather than some leaves): an upgrade to a king suite. Now we’re talking.
To be continued...
We left early Thursday, on a crowded Delta flight from San Diego to the Cincinnati airport, which is actually in North Kentucky, which is actually cold as shit. The temperature was surely somewhere in the single digits. We had to leave the building to get from one terminal (concourse) to the other (via a bus that zoomed across the tarmac). From there it was an hour flight in a smaller plane (probably just as full, but with only 2 seats to each side of the aisles).
The plane touched down at Columbia Metropolitan Airport, which is not so much metropolitan, but recently renovated, it seems. We are met there by a banner welcoming Moore School Fellowship attendees, and a student representative who was there to give us a ride to the hotel, but we had other plans: operation rent-a-car. Enterprise, true to their word, came and picked us up. I get the feeling that this is their motto because they're never located right at the airport - their locations always seem to be in a small strip mall, at arms length from any port of call. We were greeted at the rental car office by a very harried gentleman whose anxiousness, we would find out upon drop-off, was due to renting out cars to the Clinton campaign - a group who would, in an transparent act of soreloserness (not a word? it is now!), would leave their cars strewn across the CMA (Columbia Met. Airport, not the Country Music Awards) property, keys in ignition and GPS units pilfered.
We were upgraded from “economy” to something like “standard” or “full size,” due to lack of “economy” - an increasing problem across the country these days, it seems. Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I think I might have been more comfortable with the “economy” car (or an upgrade way up to “cute ute”…is there a “cute ute” rent-a-car category?), because what we were given was a Pontiac G6, which is way too big of a car for me. I don’t think I ever got the rear view mirrors, nor the drivers seat, positioned just right.
The drive to the hotel was a bit confusing. The guy at Enterprise said to just make a left out onto the street the office was on, and that went straight into downtown. The only problem was that there were several times when the street would merge with other streets and take on new directions and…my God…I’ve never seen so may U.S. Highways in one place.
A digression: in all of California, there are only a modicum of the original U.S. Highway system left. Most people are keenly aware of the 101 (Oregon to L.A.). A fair amount are probably familiar with the 50 (Sacramento to Nevada) or the 395 (Victorville to Oregon, with a brief sojourn into Nevada). There are only four more: 6, 95, 97, 199 - none of which tally much more than a hundred miles of California terrain. As you look on a map, and head east, you do notice that the US Hwy. signs become more plentiful. And then they get into this nasty habit of having up to three signed highways on a single road. I mean…WTF, transportation departments of the east coast?
So we arrive at the hotel, no problem, passing some very tall ladies in white and blue jersies as we enter the lobby. We check in at the front desk - our room is not ready yet, as a Kentucky women’s basketball team was just on their way out, and housekeeping hadn’t had time yet to clean up after most of them. Well, here we are with our bags and card keys to a dirty room, and a dinner date in 20 minutes. We asked them if we could just store our bags in the room, as we’d be out to dinner for an hour or three…and the room would be cleaned by then? “Oh, yeah, that’s no problem,” we were told. So we left our bags in the room, in what seemed to us an obvious manner of togetherness and separation from the mess in the funky-smelling room. We hit up the lobby restroom and then met up with the other Moore school peeps and piled into a van, heading for dinner.
Dinner was at Liberty Tap Room and Grill - an easily duplicated in any city bar & grill with occasional live music. Most of the cuisine was…dare I say it…Californian (gourmet burgers, woodfired pizzas, pastas, the like), except for an interesting appetizer of homemade potato chips smothered in blue cheese. Miriam and I were advised to try the shrimp and grits - which turned out was sort of a jumbalaya over grits, and was very good. Thus began my love of grits.
Okay, I only had grits one more time - breakfast on our last day - but I did come home craving it.
Dinner was finished, the van was refilled with a heavier set of people, and we returned whence we came - the Inn at USC. Yes, the hotel where Miriam and I would approach our room’s door, only to see it slightly ajar, and upon inside inspection, still mostly unkempt and minus our luggage. We high-tailed it to the front desk and asked as calmly as one can when their attire for the next several days has gone missing. Their response, “Oh, that’s your luggage?” Our luggage? Yes, our luggage which you said we could set down in the room. Apparently, housekeeping thought it was the previous occupants’ bags, and they were stowed in the office behind the front desk. What they didn’t have an answer for was why the room was still not completely cleaned. What ensued was a ineffectual and unimpressive show of finger-pointing between the front desk clerks and the housekeeping staff. In the meantime, we retrieved our bags and set up shop in part of the lobby. As we waited, an attempt was made to tranquilize our ill-feelings towards the hotel: two coupons for a free appetizer at Mr. Friendly’s (a local eatery in the Five Points district…which we never ended up going to). But do free appetizers really make up for nearly giving us a heart attack and not having a room ready at nearly 9 pm? I’m not inclined to say it is. So, a couple minutes later, we’re offered an actual olive branch (rather than some leaves): an upgrade to a king suite. Now we’re talking.
To be continued...