Traveling
Hello friends. It's about midnight right now and I am sitting in a first class seat on a Delta flight from Atlanta to Newark, New Jersey. My day started in Omaha, Nebraska, a first visit to that state, and will end with the Newark Airport Hilton around 1:30 in the morning. Then tomorrow my day will start early with a cab ride from aforementioned hotel to New York City, and will end with me walking in to my house hopefully around 5:30 after a Shuttle from NY to Boston. Not sure if things will really work out that way but I can hope.
It's been a rough three weeks of travel for me, with one worse week before the pain will finally end. Or at least dull a little. It's kind of blurred into one long security line with intermittent delays and an occasional upgrade to the front of the plane. Throw in bad cheap toiletries, local papers left outside the door and Six Flags cab rides, and my life has not been fun. My goal this year was to NOT make elite on any airline or any hotel. That way, I figured, it would mean that I was traveling enough to reach those road warrior statuses of symbol. But the way things are going, I will reduce my hotel nights but increase, dramatically, the amount of miles I fly. I am on a fast pace to reach Platinum with Delta, and that is taking into account that I fly a number of other airlines to spread out the miles. Here is how it started three weeks ago and has left me with my current state of confusion.
In the beginning of May I finally kicked a bad cold I had for 4 weeks and just when I was ready to get back into my running schedule, I hit the road, jack. It started the week of my Birthday with a Monday trip to DC, home Tuesday night on May 2 for Emily and my birthday, back out on Wednesday to NY for the day. I then headed to Toronto for Thursday and Friday and got home around 10 PM on Friday after missing a flight by a mere FIVE FREAKING MINUTES BECAUSE OF HUMAN ERROR WITH SOMEONE I WAS WITH. AAAHHHHHHHHH.
So anyway, I then turned around the following Monday at 6AM and flew to Syracuse. Syracuse was just a stop though. That night I flew to St. Louis. On Tuesday, I did what I had to do in St. Louis, and then flew back to Toronto, where I spent Wednesday and Thursday and then flew back to Boston on Thursday night for a nice three days of being home.
The following week, this week, had me home on Monday. Tuesday I was in NY City for the day. Wednesday I flew to Omaha, Nebraska. Thursday night then had me flying from Omaha, through Atlanta, to Newark. I really wanted to fly home and then back to NY on Friday morning but not too many options to get out of Omaha at night. In fact, there is a better chance of my buddy Jay hooking up with Danielle from Survivor than of me getting anywhere near the east coast after 5PM out of Omaha. So to get anywhere near the Northeast, I decided to fly to Newark to have a short meeting in NY on Friday so that I could take the shuttle home and be in my house at a reasonable hour. My only other option would have been to stay in Omaha, do a meeting by phone and then fly home in the afternoon only to get home Friday night at 10PM. Confusing for you as you read this, and nauseating for me to write it. Trust me. It hurts.
So I will get home Friday and turn around and leave Sunday for a conference in Las Vegas, not my favorite place, and come home Thursday night and with my current plans fly to Chicago on Friday, the Friday before Memorial Day weekend for Christ's sake. Not something I look forward too. Then the Tuesday after Memorial Day I am in NJ I just remembered so no end in site to this madness.
Oh well, I am not complaining. I grumble about it but no one is forcing me to keep this profession. It gives me and mine a few simple luxuries and allows me to tell my war stories. In a perverse kind of way it puts me somewhere in the middle of the pack, maybe slightly to the front, of the road warrior social club. I can say I travel to multiple cities in one week, something that is only trumped by international travel, which does not include Canada (it is less time to go to Toronto than NJ).
So I sit in my seat, earphones on, listening to old Van Morrison, free drink resting in the large partition between me and the other business clown sleeping in the leather recliner, with the room in front of me to bang on my laptop without contorting my body into a David Blaine position, relaxing for the first time in a while. It might not be the best situation, but life tends to ebb and flow with little regard to what we want. I'll steal small moments with my family that will bring joy to my life and plow the fields to put food on the table.
Nothing meaningful in this post other than giving me an outlet for a few minutes. Thanks for that.