Dumbest Man Alive – follow up.

In the mirror

Dumbest Man Alive – follow up

This is a follow-up to my column written May 13 where I wrote that I must be the dumbest man alive.

In response to what I wrote, I must have received thousands, or hundreds....OK,  two very kind notes from readers that told me I couldn’t be the dumbest man in the world, but could easily be number two.

Actually, both my daughters wrote loving notes to me telling me how smart I always made them feel.  I know the notes were from them because they were addressed, as usual, to “Dear Sir or Madam”.  I read their kind remarks many times so as not to miss any nuances to what they wrote.  I did not want to make the same mistake I did with one reader’s letter.  I thought it was an invitation when it was, in reality, a restraining order. 

That blog post that I wrote where I questioned my own intelligence was inspired by my frustration from trying to get my lawn tractor fixed.  My wife, the fetching Mrs. Intrepid Traveler, and I live in a rural area and we have lots of acreage around our house.  I purchased a riding lawn tractor in order to mow the grass quickly.  The drive belt kept slipping off of the mower deck and it eventually broke.  I do not have an owner’s manual because I bought this mower second hand, naturally, to save money.  So being a modern, tech savvy guy, I went to the Toro Lawnmower website to look up the part and find out where to buy it.  I could not find any numbers on the website that matched the serial number or model number of my mower.  I was getting angrier the longer I searched. 

I even wrote to the “Contact Us” address on the Toro website for some help, although I knew it would be days before I would get a response.  I told my wife of my dilemma, and that I could not find ANYTHING that remotely matched my mower on the Toro website.  “Toro?  Why are you looking on the Toro website?” she said in a perplexed voice.  “You have a Troy-Bilt” mower”.   Duh.  I had just wasted hours on this wild goose chase and worse yet, I knew that the Toro guys were gonna put my email up on the bulletin board as their dumbest question ever submitted. 

And the second stupid thing I did was to forget to include the Toro story in the very blog post which was inspired by that incident.  Had I included it, perhaps not even my daughters would have been able to overlook my folly.  No wonder both were so eager to get married and change their last names.

Again, thanks for the warm words of encouragement that I am sure you readers are thinking, but apparently are not sending.  I enjoyed reading all of the ones I did get, except one.  I definitely could have done without the note from the Director of Rusk State Mental Hospital, who sent me an Admissions Form.

Lost in Space, My first trip to China - part one

There is an entire family of Chinese living in my pants.

Lost in Space, My first trip to China - part one

Even though I am Your Intrepid Traveler, it does not mean I am eager to go to every country on the planet in order to experience new cultures and ethnicities.  Hardly.  I couldn’t care less about most cultures.  I don’t even understand my own culture.  I still don’t know why we need to set a table with salad and dinner forks.  Isn’t one enough?  And why two sizes of fork?  Our mouths don’t change size during the meal, so why does the fork need to change?

China is one of those countries that, as far as I am concerned, can keep its culture and its 5,000 year old history to itself.  I can’t be bothered.  I am very busy being ignorant.  Believe me, that is a full time job.  However, an overseas company approached me with a multi-million dollar project financed by the Chinese National Petroleum Corp, (CNPC).  We began a series of discussions which all led up to me going to Chengdu, China for face to face meetings with the decision makers of this massive project.  Suddenly, visiting China didn’t seem so bad.

It was a rushed trip and I barely had time to get a visa for China. I had to leave the Friday of Memorial Day weekend and would be gone eight days.  It is a long way to China, as you may know.  In fact, it is directly on the other side of the globe from me.  I always heard that you could dig a tunnel thru the earth and come out in China, but since I had to leave by Friday, I would not have time to prove out that theory.  I would fly instead.

To get there from Houston I had to stop in three other cities, Los Angeles, then Shanghai, then to Chengdu.  I landed in Shanghai after traveling over 18 hours with no real sleep.  I went thru Customs, since this was my entry point into the country.  Typically you have to collect your luggage, get cleared by Customs, then re-check your bag and get on another plane.  That procedure did not happen on this stop, but I was not concerned since United Airlines told me my suit bag would be sent all the way to my final destination.  (That should have been a red flag for me since the ticket agent in Houston said my bag would get to Chengdu, no problem)

Well, as you can probably guess, I arrived safely at my final destination, at 2 in the morning, but my suit bag, with all my clothes, did not.  I spent another hour filling out paperwork for lost luggage, and then headed to the hotel.  After only three hours of sleep, I had a breakfast meeting with my contacts in Chengdu.  We spent the entire day going over details of the project and completely missed lunch.  By 6pm my bag had still not arrived.  The airline now said they did not even know where it was.  I was still wearing the same hiking pants and fishing shirt I wore for traveling.  On the plane I dressed for comfort, not for style. 

My presentation to the decision makers of CNPC was scheduled for the next morning.  I HAD to go find some clothes.  So I told Jack, my interpreter, to find a shopping area where I could get something to wear.  I am tall and much larger than most Asians.  In fact, I think my shoes are larger than some Asian countries.  Jack was doubtful we’d find anything.  He looked at me as if I were a freaky Herman Munster sized person. I told him that in a city of millions of people, there had to be some store that had my size. He looked at me like I was crazy.  (I get that look a lot). 

We went to a dozen or more men’s clothing shops before we found a pair of dress slacks that would fit me.  The pants were found in the storage area where they keep the inventory that doesn’t sell.  The only reason these pants fit me was because the hemline was not yet tailored and there was plenty of length in the legs.  I did not ask the price, I just had them sew the hem and wrap them up.  We started the process all over again by looking for a dress shirt.  Finding a shirt had to be easier to find than a pair of slacks, right?  At least you’d think that.  But none of a dozen other clothing stores had a shirt my size.  I even tried on a 3XL size golf shirt which was made from stretchy material.  It felt like it was painted on.  No thank you.  I know that science fiction movies predict that all of us will be wearing spandex in the future, but I HATE tight clothing.  Finally, I found a store that had ONE short sleeve, button down dress shirt that nearly fit me.  But the fabric was so thin you could see my chest hair thru the shirt.  I would like to say you could also see my ripped abdominal muscles thru the shirt but they were with my missing luggage.  So, I reluctantly spent the $60 dollars, (ouch) for the polyester shirt, knowing that I would never again wear it after this presentation. 

I took my new “wardrobe” back to the hotel.  Then I realized that I had no underwear.  The hiking pants have built-in mess “briefs” so tomorrow I would have to go commando.  Oh, great.  When I stand up to do my presentation not only will they see my chest hair and flab thru the shirt, they may see more than that with those clingy slacks. 

I then had to get the wrinkles out of the clothes.  The hotel would not loan me an iron and the laundry was closed for the night.  I tried steaming the shirt in the shower but it was not helping much.   I went to bed, knowing that tomorrow I would be wearing jogging shoes with those slacks, no belt, and a wrinkled see-thru shirt while hoping to convince the big shots with CNPC that I knew what I was talking about.  Maybe they’d think I was eccentric and smart.  OK, maybe just eccentric.

I crawled in to bed, praying that the Magic Clothing Fairy would visit me in the night.  Of course, she probably wouldn’t have my size either.  But un-believably, Jack knocked on my door at one a.m. with my suit bag.  He’d called the airport one last time and sure enough, it had arrived. Now all I had to do was un-pack and steam the wrinkles from my good old trusty natural fiber, permanent pressed, wrinkle free, (probably made in China) men’s wear.  Underwear too!  So, the day came for the presentation, all went well, and I did not get arrested for indecent exposure.   Jack’s delivery was much appreciated, but I can’t help wondering what the Magic Clothing Fairy would wear?  And can I make her a red hot deal for a wrinkled polyester see thru shirt and unworn slacks?