Life on the Road

so as was instructed by fellow travelling inspectors at my company, supermarkets are the key to optimizing your $60 per day allowance to spend on food. it allows you to pack lunches and finish inspections quicker, and it also lets you eat healthier, letting you avoid the chains and what not.

as you may know, the gold standard in supermarkets is Whole Foods. i found the nearest Whole Foods to my apartment and made sure to get over there as soon as i could.

so i just got this job which requires me to travel to different dedtinations in the us, inspecting hardware stores for their rack/shelving safety. every week, i visit 2 or 3 stores, and am in transit the other weekdays. every weekend, i live at home in montreal, quebec, canada.

last week, i travelled with another inspector, for a week of training. my friend showed me the ropes for not only inspecting, but also managing life on the road.

after last week, i received a corporate credit card which can be used for 60usf of food purchase per day. not bad at all. unfortunately, after activating the card at the eleventh hour, before taking my uber from my montreal apartment to the YUL airport, i left the paperwork for the card at home. this paperwork had my pin, which seemed catastrophic at first. as credit cards are needed to check into the hote and claim the rental car, but it wasn’t as costly as it felt at first.

so i set off with my new wheelie luggage and a backpack on my first trip alone on a plane. i have previously had a trip alone, and a plane ride alone, but not the intersection of those two.

the monday flight to atlanta goes well. the company gives us ipads to conduct the inspections, so i had a great entertainment option on the small YUL-ATL plane. the wifi is pay-per so i made sure to download some netflix before take off. i watched part 1,2 of the aaron hernandez documentary. sad story but enjoyable watch.

so we land in atlanta, the busiest airport in the world. aparently 80% of the us population is within 2hr plane of there. there is no other reasonable explanation why a city 1/3 the size of montreal has such a busy airport.

because of the size, there is a lot of transit involved in getting to the rental car garage. i may get into it later in another post, but it’s really ab engineering marvel how they’ve designed everything at the airport and in the area with such clean organization. i guess you could say that for many airports, idk.

so i get to the rental area not sure if i will have success without my credit card pin. i pick out a car, specifically a 2020 Nissan Altima. very nice ride, drives well, comfy seats, but it really stands out with the tech. it has apple carplay, letting me mirror my iphone onto the built in dash screen. it is a gamechanger. with destinations already saved and put into a folder on my maps app, i didnt have to enter in addresses manually on the dash screen, or worse, use my iphone on my lap. driving in a new city is really a breeze with this. to claim the car, which my company already reserved for me, they just needed my drivers license. so i was off on the road.

next, i dropped off my stuff at my hotel and bought a ticket on stubhub for the atlanta hawks basketball game that monday night. once i had the ticket, i drove to the game, and parked for $20, which was really the only price i could find. but it was a highly standardized and strucured system. you pay to register your license plate, and then someone just checks all the plates in the lot against the system. pretty sleek.

the evening aky in downtown atlanta was nice that night

next i went in the statefarm arena to see the hawks play the celtics (im from boston originally) the mercedes benz stadium is right near by

the game was great. had some expensive concession food (pork and slaw) on the company card (paypass=no pin). very nice and new stadium.

after the game i scooted to the hotel, with much help from the apple carplay system, so nice so so nice. i was playin some ti, totally forgot he is from atl. im a big ti fan. paper trail is the goat.