Science Conference

Going to a large city is a frightful and disconcerting experience. I went to a science conference in Pasadena last weekend, and while it sounds good to plan such a thing, in reality it wasn’t so much fun.

To begin with it was a hard thing to get started. In fact I had a hard time getting off the ground, as the 2:00 PM departure plane didn’t leave the airport until 5:30 PM. The late departure of course led to missing the connection in San Francisco which led to the Customer Service Desk informing me that they had me booked on a 8:30 AM flight. I protested and told them I had an 8:30 AM class (BS) that I couldn’t miss at which time they found an available seat on a 9:30 PM flight to Burbank.

When I got to Burbank I took a shuttle to the Pasadena Vagabond Hotel. I was a little leery about where it was since when we pulled in I noticed it was somewhat of a shady neighborhood. Few street lights and too many liquor stores. It must have been in a very unhealthy part of town as there were quite a few collectives there too. I’m not sure what ‘collective’ has to do with selling marijuana but there are quite a few things in this world that I’m still fuzzy about. The things that really made me nervous were the people limping, running, and hobbling along just outside the hotel. There was also a woman (I think) standing by the only partially working light pole. She looked like a dropout from a pole-dancing class trying to flag down passing cars. There was even a guy with a bloodied shirt sitting on the sidewalk in front of the hotel watching her while laughing manically. Yes, the people around the neighborhood looked like the bar scene from Star Wars.

About that time I was just about ready to ask the shuttle driver how much he would charge if I just slept in the back of his shuttle for the night. It was already 11:00 PM and I was pretty sure I could negotiate a pretty fair price with him and get a good night’s sleep. The thing that made me think otherwise was the sound of the squealing tires and racing engines, but I thought the sound of muffled voices and screams may not lead to a restful night’s sleep. I didn’t give him a tip especially when he said to me without turning the engine off, “You can make it to the door can’t you?” It seemed like he knew something that he didn’t want to tell me. In fact all the while he was racing the engine appearing to want to get out of there as quick as possible. Before I even got to the front door of the lobby a guy with foul smelling breath and a leaky band-aid on his forehead that looked like he was one gene short of being an idiot walked up behind me and said, “Hey buddy, got any spare change?” It’s kind of like when a woman addresses me as “Honey.” I didn’t even know the guy and he’s calling me, buddy. Not too savory of a neighborhood. I wanted to tell him to crawl up his ass and disappear, but I thought he might get mad and wipe some blood on me or something, so I didn‘t. I was beginning to think that I was the grand puba of idiots.

Pasadena is supposed to be the City of Roses and it’s the one thing I didn’t see there.