How to tell if a city sucks, in under 5 minutes

I travel quite a bit. For work, I'm travelling often, and in my free time, I enjoy going to new places. And I've discovered something. You can determine what a city is like solely by its airport.

It's true. Fly into JFK, and you'll see it's dirty and crowded. Tucson's airport is small, and has a distinctive Mexican flavor. San Jose is clean, crowded, and full of cool tech stuff. Sky Harbor in Phoenix is big, crowded, and full of chain restaurants, just like Phoenix.

I always test this theory when flying to a place for the first time. This last week, I flew to Little Rock. The airport was pretty small, very clean, closed early, and had very friendly employees. Little Rock was pretty small, very clean, closed early, and had friendly people. The theory works again!

Try this out for yourself and let me know if it's true for you as well. Oh, and if you get mugged at the airport, get your ass back on the plane and get the hell out of there. The city will be much worse.

Even in good times, I find a way to screw up

My Sun Devils are in the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2003, and only the third time since 1981. I am a HUGE college hoops fan, so this thrills me to no end. Well, the sucking doesn't thrill me, the fact we're actually in thrills me. Which is why this post is so painful.

In the winter, my lady friend and I decided to make a trip to go see her son. He is a pitcher playing for a college team in the south. She's not wealthy, so she doesn't get to see him play very often. I've watched him grow up, so I wanted to go as well. We made our plans, and she's real excited.

Unfortunately, I didn't realize the weekend we were going was the first weekend of the NCAA tournament. Fuck me. Well, it's not the end of the world. As long as ASU plays Thursday, I'll get to see the game. And if it's the evening games on Friday, I'll still be able to see it.

Friday morning, 11:45 Arizona time. Shit!

I checked my itinerary. OK, all is not lost. I have a layover in St. Louis. Maybe I can catch the end of the game at the bar in the airport. Hopefully no Big-12 teams will be playing at the same time.

Missouri-Cornell, noon Arizona time. Shit! Shit!

OK, don't panic. CBS claims they will offer free live streaming of all tournament games. I'll just bring my laptop, and when we land, I can watch it online. Surely, they have Wi-Fi at an airport as big as St. Louis, right?

They do. Yay! $7.95/hr. Shit! Shit! Shit!

This is bullshit. According to this site, it is the second most expensive hourly airport Wi-Fi in the country, behind only University Park State College, wherever the fuck that is. Seriously, eight bucks an hour? That's almost an airport beer!!

And to top everything off, it looks like it is going to rain this weekend, which means he might not even have any games. This is turning out to be a giant Hungarian clusterfuck.