My traveling has finally concluded and I’m back in the frigid air of Philadelphia. I would be lying if I didn’t say that I enjoyed the 80 degree weather of the keys and the 80 degree weather of San Antonio. On Monday, I scheduled a flight into San Antonio for the International Roofing Show in the late evening. I was chatting it up with the cab driver on my way to the hotel and learned that 50% of San Antonio is Latin American which for whatever reason I hadn’t considered. I arrived at 10pm at Hotel Contessa which was quite a luxurious hotel. I had a king suite which I packaged for 2 nights and airfare for about $650 dollars which I thought was pretty reasonable considering how nice the hotel was. I went to sleep early to get a good start on my Tuesday.

I woke up at 7:15 and ate a buffet style breakfast which was tight. After rocking a deuce, I put on my running gear to explore San Antonio. After some basic running around the streets to get my bearings I found the Riverwalk which you can see from the picture below.

San Antonio Riverwalk

On just a fabulous run I must have taken the Riverwalk upstream about 4 miles or so and then back. Early in the morning, not many people on the path, and beautiful weather was a perfect start to the day. When I got back I showered and prepared for the first day of the roofing show. I also downloaded a book called the Keys to Success by Napoleon Hill which I’ve been pretty floored by after only finishing about 20% of the book. More on this in future posts. Without getting into great detail about the show, I spent 5+ floor hours meeting people and networking with contacts amongst the industry. A Gourlay lookalike who I’ve been working with and has taken a liking to me and invited me to a business “party” hosted by a huge player of the roofing industry.

It was at 7:30 and the show ended at 5 so I went back to the hotel and to the pool area where I just relaxed on the top level of this beautiful pool. After that I found the Riverwalk again and ate some Spanish food and had a few beers at a local spot. I met some random Texan at the bar who was pretty entertaining. After my first sentence to him saying I was from Pennsylvania he replied with, “you sure sound like it.” After dinner I met up with my contact and we drank some beers and basically just had a good time at this open bar. I probably drank about 10 beers and was pretty buzzed but not out of control. I went back to my hotel and called it a night around midnight.

Sadly that was the most exciting part of my adventure. The 2nd day of the roofing show wasn’t nearly as beneficial to me as the first day because I had done most everything I wanted to do. I spent some time exploring the Alamo which I can know say I know what happened there and more of the city of San Antonio which I will say is a pretty nice, clean, well laid out city. The weather is pretty fantastic as well. I boarded my plane at 6pm to connect in Chicago and then back home. I got in around 1am and everything was smooth sailing. The trip was really quite refreshing and doing things like that are essential to keeping your mind open and thinking.

This is just a quick thought on airplane travel which bothered me. Carry on bags are just that, carry ons. They aren’t small suitcases. I watch all these guys who think they are so smart not checking in a bag and watch all the inconvenience they cause with their too large for a small compartment suitcase. In the past 6 days I’ve checked a bag 4 times successfully. Literally not having to wait more than 7 minutes after getting to the carousel. So the idea of them losing your bag isn’t a valid argument. USAIR makes you pay 25 bucks so I understand the cheapskate mentality of not paying this fee but seriously if I watch one more idiot stuff a bag too big for the storage compartment I’m going to flip. I also watched this idiot Asian play this game on his Ipad that made a sound every time he made a move. I almost spazzed out when I heard it for 30 minutes straight but figured he was some foreigner who didn’t understand English and it would be more trouble than it was worth. MUTE MOTHERFUCKER! Same thing with people playing Solitare. That’s the worst game on the goddamn planet. I don’t even feel I need to back up the shittiness of that game.