jet set

I was talking to my friend Deanne the other day and she said she was jealous that I get to travel so much. Travel is not all it's cracked up to be...

Yesterday I was finishing up with my client at 3:30. I had to drive from San Ramon to SFO to catch a 6:50 flight. Oh, it will only take you an hour to get there my client said. You're going to be sitting around the airport. He wanted to talk to me more about his organization.

I sat there for 15 more minutes and then said I had to go. Clients always wait until I'm about to leave to decide they have something very important to tell me. These are the same clients that get pissed for having to pay extra charges when I miss my flight because they delay me.

I started driving on 580 and thought maybe my client was right. Even though I thought I had plenty of time I was speeding, thinking maybe I could grab a glass of wine before my plane took off.

Then traffic came literally to a screeching halt. By 5 PM I was still 24 miles from the airport, stopped dead on the highway. I hate being in those situations. Further, I had not had a chance to print my boarding pass so on top of having to return a car and get through security I had to print my boarding pass. I thought for sure I would miss my flight.

I managed to make it to car return by 6 PM. A train showed up right as I was arriving at the platform to go to the terminal but the fucking fuckwit in front of me wouldn't get out of the way on the escalator so I missed the train. It was 6:05. I knew if I missed my flight I'd be stuck at least overnight and that assumed that there were seats on a flight out. And I'm flying to Richmond tomorrow so I really needed to not be stuck in SF until Friday.

Finally I got to the terminal at 6:15, ran for security, and luckily the woman manning the line thought I was a stewardess and let me through the premium security line. You would think I'd have status on an airline with all my travels but they all expired while I was in the middle east and my company flies me on a different airline every week. It will take forever to get my status back.

The boarding was just finishing when I got to the gate and thankfully I was able to stow my bag before the bins got full. All I could imagine was a glass of red wine but the fucking plane was out. Note to people who don't travel much: airlines always run out of food and alcohol usually by the time they get to the 10th row. Don't plan your meals with the assumption there will be anything other than crappy snacks on the plane.

Got home at 11 PM last night and had to work on another project until 1 in the morning (they were doing a customer presentation today and waited until 4 PM PST to tell me they needed me to run some reports on their data - nice planning). Today I'm trying to get all my local errands done because I won't be back to Denver until September.

Ech. Life in the fast lane.