The Big Black Travel Cloud…

Well, the big, black travel cloud has reared his ugly head again.

Since I started working at the new company late last year, I’ve taken quite a few business trips and even more personal (read: LGBA) trips. My co-worker PJW has this joke that I have a horrible black travel cloud that follows me.

It started back in October of last year. The new company asked me to attend a export/import symposium in San Diego. Upon arriving in the city, I found the city up in flames, people being evacuated, and so forth. The morning the symposium was to begin, the head of the group came in to the meeting and stated, “we have to cancel due to the fires. Please check out of the hotel and go home.” Well, that would have been fine and well had my plane ticket going home, but I was on my way to Houston for a camping trip. Luckily, I was able to talk American Airlines into letting me fly to Dallas, stay there a few days (and work with a co-worker) and then continue my trip to Houston.

Then in November, I was asked to go to Denver to help with a site audit. The Frontier flight was about 6 hours delayed leaving DCA, so I missed the first day of the audit. On my final day, a leak in the hotel room above mine caused my bathroom to flood and I had to move to a new room at 5AM. Finally, when I came home, Frontier misplaced my suitcase. The audit went well though.

Now, it is 9:56PM EDT and I’m supposed to be well on my way to BWI, back from Indy. Evidently, there were some crazy-storms in Chicago this afternoon and they shut the whole airport down. So what does that mean? It means that United Airlines has been playing catch-up all day and my flight doesn’t leave Chicago until 11:50PM (ironically, very near the time I’m supposed to be landing. Lets also add in that I think I’ve come down with a cold/flu thing (again… didn’t this just happen 2 weeks ago???) and I can tell you my wait is miserable.

So my schedule for the next 24 hours has me leaving ORD at 11:50PM (all times EDT), landing at BWI around 1:50AM, hopefully in my car by 2:30AM, at home by 3:30AM in bed and asleep by 4:00AM and up at 7:00AM so that I can be perky for a training class that I am teaching at 8:30AM, 10:30AM and 2:00PM. I think as soon as that class is over, I’m probably going to go home and take a nap. With luck, I’ll feel better and can make it to band rehearsal. If not, it may be a 2 Nyquil night and sleep through until Tuesday morning.