I have said for years that the only people who think business travel is glamorous are people who have never traveled on business. Fortunately, I don't travel much any more. I traveled quite a bit at various times in my career, though. I quickly grew tired of hearing people talk about how lucky I was to see so many places, stay in hotels and eat out all the time.
What were they thinking????
Being stuck in a metal tube with tens or hundreds of other people to go to some hotel with hundreds of other people in a strange city with thousands of even more people might be your idea of glamour. It's certainly not mine.
I could be perfectly content living as a hermit. I'd keep Diane with me, of course; and the boys could visit periodically, but other than that I would prefer to live in a cabin in the middle of a vast hunting woods bisected by a trout stream.
Instead, I live in a subdivision and drive to an office where I spend my days working around a group of guys that, while a great group, are just not as fun as if I was spending the day in the woods with Diane. And I occasionally still have to travel. As air travel has become a bigger and bigger hassle through the years; I have increased the distance I am willing to drive instead of flying. A one day trip to Atlanta goes just a bit outside that driving radius, though.
I needed to exhibit at an exposition put on by one of our distributors an hour, or so, south of Atlanta Thursday morning. Driving eighteen hours each way for a six hour expo is a bit too radical - even for me!
So I flew. By the time I got home, I almost wished I had just decided to drive.
The trip down was uneventful. That's pretty much the perfect flight. Uneventful. The trip started out very well. In fact, the trip went well until I left the expo to drive back to the airport.
The Thursday evening before Good Friday is not a good day to travel. The roads are mobbed, the airport is mobbed and the worst part is that the mob is not experienced business travelers.
I was booked on a 6:45 PM flight back to Milwaukee. I had gotten out of the expo much earlier than originally anticipated, so I hoped I could make it to the airport in time to catch an earlier flight. I spent almost an extra hour on the road back to the airport due to traffic and ended up missing a chance to switch flights by less than one half hour. Not a big deal, right? I'd just stick to the original plan.
I got to my gate early; sat down to read and plugged in my phone. Within minutes; along came Mom and Leland - a totally undisciplined three or four year old who she called, "Baby" for the duration of the trip. She was joined a few minutes later by Dad, Sister and Grandpa. As they all settled in to eat their sundaes from the McDonalds across the aisle, Leland began doing what totally undisciplined three or four year olds do - terrorize the entire gate area. He was loud, obnoxious and allowed to get into other people's spaces and things.
I moved.
After only one gate change (a great result in Atlanta, if you ask me), we boarded our plane. Imagine my joy to discover that Leland and Mom are seated in the row directly in front of me; Mom on the aisle and "Baby" in front of me in the window seat. "Baby" refused to sit down; instead standing on the seat and screaming over the seat back toward me. Mom finally turned him around after Dad and Grandpa convinced her that she couldn't allow him to do that. Instead, he decided to spin around and beat on his sister's head in the seat in front of him.
This was going to be a brutal two hours, right?
If only!
We pushed away from the gate right on time. I'd be home in time to watch the third period of the Blues game! We sat there on the tarmac for much longer than we should have before the pilot came on the intercom to let us know they were having a problem with an indicator on one of the generators. Maintenance was on the way to take a look at it. They tried resetting it before deciding that we needed to pull back into the gate. We stayed on board while they fiddled around with it; reset all of the electrical systems on the aircraft and restarted the engines. Everything came on line just fine.
We pushed away from the gate again; only about a half hour late, now. We dutifully got in line to head to the runway. "Baby" still refused to sit down and be buckled in. I do believe there is no worse punishment that can be inflicted on people than to tap them in a metal tube with a totally undisciplined three or four year old whose Mom thinks he is cute. I think this would be a better torture technique than pulling out my fingernails. Yes, I'm quite certain it would be more effective.
We taxied forever until we were finally about the fourth in line for takeoff. A collective groan went up throughout the aircraft as the pilot came on the intercom again to tell us they were having a problem with the nose gear and were going to have to go back to the gate to have maintenance check it. "Baby" continued his ongoing fight with Mom about the need to sit in his seat.
Back at the gate, the maintenance people hoped they could merely recharge the nitrogen shock absorber and get us back on our way - again. Fortunately, they didn't delay too long before figuring out that a simple nitrogen recharge was not going to fix the problem and they had another MD-90 aircraft just coming in for a landing that was ending its day in Atlanta and could be serviced and turned around as our new plane.
We all got off the plane and sat at another gate for about an hour while waiting for the new plane to be serviced and refueled. By this time; we were well past our original landing time in Milwaukee and "Baby" was WAAAAAAY past his bedtime.
They finally got the aircraft ready and we re-boarded. I was still stuck right behind Mom and "Baby," of course, but he seemed to have finally settled down a bit. We pushed away for the third time and made our way in line to, hopefully, actually begin our journey home. We taxied all the way to the end another time. Another collective groan went up in the cabin again as the pilot came onto the intercom yet again with the words, "Ladies and gentlemen, this is the captain from the flight deck." There was a long pause as we waited for the other shoe to drop. What was a groan turned into applause and cheering as he continued, "I just wanted to let you know we're number two for takeoff."
While that certainly was good news; the cheer it caused woke up "Baby."
Oh, joy... At least we only had another two hours of it...
I mean, really; how much more glamorous can business travel get?
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