Leaving #NCTEAR19 & Ready To Return to the Chaos of the Week Ahead. In the Meantime Exhaustion.

Ready to take my flying fish back to Connecticut, but first I have to make sure that Abu gets on his flights to Syracuse and Allison, who is heading to the same destination, gets  on a flight that leaves ten minutes before my own.

Our last night in Birmingham turned into a strange night. We went to the UAB Charlotte basketball game, and left at halftime because it was like watching middle school basketball. We tried to find somewhere to eat, even googled places to eat in Birmingham, and had little luck. We ended up back at the hotel.

Long story short, it's Sunday morning and I'm still waiting for my meal to arrive. Abu's food came, and it was so salty that it was impossible to eat (how can you eat chicken with that much salt). He ate his fries and Allison ate her cornbread and meatless tacos. I ended up not having to pay much for the dinner - basically it was Allisons' glass of wine and bread. The manager admitted that they weren't capable to serve the volume of people (I simply said, "That's because there are no other restaurant choices in downtown Birmingham...just the hotel). We tried to eat on  campus during the game, but the girl said, "We don't have any food left." Serious. They did have chicken tenders but that wasn't enough. We ventured back to the hotel and as I said, they never brought my food out.

I tried Abu's but it was way too salty. We decided we'd just wait to eat at the airport tomorrow.

That's a negative, however, after two days of positive. The NCTEAR experience has been wonderful and we couldn't get better hospitality from the UAB people behind the program. The hotel, however, didn't seem ready to accommodate guests: no Internet, no staff to clear lunches, no technicians to deal with the audio/computer issues. That's not on UAB. That's on the the University's relation with Hilton.

I feel very enlightened and lucky to have attended the conference, but I am leaving with a few scratches to the noggin'. The last 14 hours were surreal.

And the amount of salt in my mouth from attempting to each Abu's chicken. Phew. That was disgusting. I told the manager, "I'm just going to give you the benefit of the doubt. It was a really, really bad night for you and your staff."

There's not enough water in the world to get this salt lick taste out of my mouth.