business.trip.from.hell

[jcampbell]

Sunday the 9th I get over to Long beach airport to fly out ot Miami just after 6:00am... but woke up with a serious hang over from tustin brew Saturday night. Get up though and get on the freeway, except there is a major accident, beer bottles everywhere so the po po's decided to middle finger the other drivers with closing the 22 frwy. Great I was 5 cars from breaking the traffic break. I roll in late, park the car and run to the terminal, just in time to make the flight.

Time to relax... nope, ah we have fog and we can't take off. 1 + hours later the plane moves and we wait in line some more. Finally we are off. Keep in mind I have a stupid connecting flight in Pheonix. Nice, US Air doesn't even care and strands 13 of us, since I was the first one off the plane I make it to the customer service counter, get myself a solid ticket to Vegas and into Miami by 12pm Ouch... but also get a couple standby passes... missed them both by one spot. Wait and fly to Vegas... win 200 bucks on slots in the terminal got to board and the staff isnt going to fly in for another 2 hours. Get to Miami, cab to the hotel and I beleive it was 3am. So I left the house at 5:15am and arrived in Miami at 3am. Minus 3 hours for time and that's 16 hours of Airports.

Have a meeting at 7am today, a half hour away. Ouch!

Gee, business is so easy.

[slowSSer]

and the misery continues.

more bad:

found out the hard way that gas pumps quit at $75.00...and that wasn't a full tank. apparently the fam-van had a HUGE tank. had to put $33.00 more in about 30 miles later to top it up for returning to the rental joint.

fine. at the airport WAY early with the intent of finding a beer or three so that i'll just pass out on the plane. all's well...or so i thought.

get to ticket counter, get tix, check bag, get to security. no line! so, shoes and jacket in one bin, laptop in another, timbuk2 on its own. as per normal.

the TSA person keeps running my bag back n forth thru the x-ray machine. I'm sure it's going to come out glowing at this point. "sir, can we search your bag?" fine. done this before. nothing to worry about.

it turns out that they think that my WRX key fob (metal) has a knife in it- why didnt they just ask? oh well, at least the TSA peeps in Indianapolis are nice...unlike most places.

done with that, off to find something to make myself not care (see beer comment above). I stroll down the terminal, checking all of the quality establishments out on my way to find my gate, just so i know exactly where to stumble to after beer 3 (keep in mind that i havent eaten since 6:00 am, and it's 2:00 pm). get to the gate, sit down to do one more e-mail check and my name is paged...over the airport system.

well, that's new- never had that happen before! so, I'm supposed to hit the nearest continental ticket counter. they tell me that even that i'm at the airport 4 hours before my flight is to leave, if i wait for my 6:00 flight, that due to weather in Houston, i won't make my connecting flight in Texas and won't be able to fly into John Wayne (last flight in is something like 10:30 pm).

oh cr@p.

the awesome people 240'd me (was that the code?) and I'm now on the Northwest 3:15 pm flight through Minneapolis to get me home at 7:15 our time.

Continental, you officially rock.

downside: have to go back out to the ticketing stations to exchange continental boarding pass with northwestern pass. fine. that goes well. i do notice that the security line has gone from zero to epic. fabulous.

boarding pass prints up. something strange noticed: below my name is "SSSS". hmm, what could that mean?

get to different terminal and find no line. sweet! however, ticket TSA person says "you need to go over to the far right lane for the full check up.

ugh.

so, first step, offload shoes and jacket into one bin, laptop into another, timbuk2 into its own. normal, eh? no. i then get to go thru this machine that hits you with jets of air, supposedly "sniffing" explosives. fine. THEN the metal detector....which my watch sets off....which has NEVER happened before in over 20 security checkpoints in 2 years.

fine.

now, as i'm "special" (no jokes, all- i've heard them) my entire bag gets to be swabbed down and tested with those little circular wipes, testing for something like 6 common explosives (not sure, but i think i saw TNT and nitro on there) which takes for ever.

side note: work this time involved gas stations, so i'm worried about petroleum residue on my shoes- it would have been worse two trips ago. why? fertilizer/pesticide/herbicide distributors. I'm sure I would have had some explaining to do.

finally get thru all of that and head to my gate. earlier flight, no time for beer.

damn.

finally, i have an issue with northwest: no entertainment, no radio, no movies, no nada....and i have a dead ipod and no reading materials. fvck.

so, trip from hell over. drowned myself last night with vodka tonics. so needed.

side notes:
*Continental still serves small meals for free and has some sort of entertainment...even though it was "alvin and the chipmunks". what crap- how did that even get made into a movie?
*Enterprise Sucks.
*huge vans suck....gas.
*the people in the midwest are super nice, even in the big cities. so NOT California. everyone says "hi".
*the only thing that scares me is that quite a few of the teenage kids i saw looked drugged out. badly. then again, i was staying in truck stop towns

[roadkillross]

stinks

[Pain Freak]

Originally Posted by FoShizzle

kids arent the problem, i LOVE kids.....i HATE work (and Burner) which is my real issue

And Aqua, don't forget poor ol Aqua.

[OMR]

Originally Posted by slowSSer

and the misery continues. more bad:

This has got to be karma catching up with you... what did you do in a previous life????

This story sort of reminds me of some of the climbing epics I've done.... can't get any worse and it does. Glad you were able to vent ... you'll laugh about this in 20 or 30 years!.... Now take a long pull on that vodka tonic....

[foofighter]

well it's over ethan you can relax now

[J_Sims]

You gotta love the SSSS thing.. Generally most real last minute and or one way tickets that I book get those lovely letters across the bottom...


SUX but hey you lived through it and in reality if F&^%$d travel on a business trip is the worst thing that is happening right now we are quite fortunate...

[Burner]

Northwest sucks ass, period

[Code Blue]

Originally Posted by Burner

Northwest sucks ass, period

change that avatar!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[slowSSer]

Originally Posted by OMR

This has got to be karma catching up with you... what did you do in a previous life????

This story sort of reminds me of some of the climbing epics I've done.... can't get any worse and it does. Glad you were able to vent ... you'll laugh about this in 20 or 30 years!.... Now take a long pull on that vodka tonic....

zero idea- can you channel past lives and let me know, oh sagely one?

kinda serious here

Originally Posted by foofighter

well it's over ethan you can relax now

yeah, until the next business trip next month. grrrr.