On second thought, prohibition trumps them all

I’m not one to brag, but I’ve got dual flat screen monitors on my desk at work. It’s a pretty sweet setup and one that’s hard to live without when I’m trying to work on a single monitor anywhere else. Yesterday the dual monitors weren’t such the hot ticket however. On my right monitor I was trying to book a flight to Salt Lake City and on my left monitor I was reading CNN’s web site coverage of Flight 1549 crashing into the Hudson Bay.

I hate flying with a passion. I hate it so much that I’d rather drive for days before flying for hours. Well, that may be a bit of an exaggeration. There are a few exceptions based on the route. Certain drives tend to suck the life out of you. Driving up the 5 to anywhere is monotonous and the 15 to SLC is almost as hellish.

Once, James Williams and I left for Deer Valley on a Wednesday afternoon and got so bored with the drive by nightfall that we decided to stop at a road side rest and people-watch the other weary travelers for a few hours. When we finally arrived in SLC the next morning we had a few hours to kill before picking up Sean Donovan at the airport. Our mission then became coffee. You know how hard it is to find a good cup of coffee in the Mormon state? Don’t get me wrong, Utah is in my fave five of states, but we combed old town SLC on foot for more than an hour before discovering real coffee. It was being served in an indie bookstore and once we were sitting with cups and books in hand, I got this weird feeling that we were breaking Utah state law. It felt more like we were in a 1920s Chicago speakeasy than in a bookstore/coffee house and at any moment we'd be victims of a gold old fashion police raid.

Anyway, so I guess the only thing worse than a monotonous drive and commercial airline flight would be working with a single computer monitor and bad coffee, or no coffee at all.