Yup, today's travel was special

Up at 4:45 a.m. after a little over three hours of sleep.

RDU screwed up the TSA pre-check line again thanks to having only one drug-sniffing dog.  Nothing says fun like extra time in the security line.

The plane to Cincinnati was late. 

The cabbie at the airport had no smartphone, an ancient GPS system, and didn't know how to find our destination.

The plane out of Cincinnati was late.

We hit the terminal in Atlanta with 25 minutes to go before our plane was due to take off--and we had to hike to the train, ride the train two stops, and then hike to our gate.  Amazingly, we made it.

The plane out of Atlanta was late in departing--but arrived early.

Business travel life is the party life.

On the road again: Travel day

So far, so good. I slept precious little, but that was my own damn fault. Airport security was a breeze, my upgrades came through, the bandwidth at the Admiral's Club was reliable, and I boarded only ten minutes late.

Best lines of the day so far:

A man at RDU, sitting next to me while we both put on our shoes: "This is reason enough to kick Bin Laden's ass. If he and I ever meet, we're gonna have a problem."

A young boy leaving the plane at DFW: "Mommy, does this airport have escalators? They're the best!"

Hard to argue with either person. I made a point of enjoying my long escalator rides more in the boy's honor.

I'm now working in the Admiral's Club at DFW. I have a Diet Coke, a cup of cold water, a power plug next to my chair, no one is talking to me, and the area is fairly quiet.

All in all, it's about as good as a travel day can be, at least so far.

Rules for airplane travelers

I wrote yesterday's entry yesterday but only now got around to posting it. My boarding and flight experience steamed me enough that I thought I'd offer these rules to my fellow travelers. All our lives would be better if you followed them.

* Put one carry-on bag under the seat in front of you. Yes, I know your legs would like the space; so would mine. More important, though, is leaving enough space overhead so those with two bags can store them, sit, and make it possible for the plane to take off.

* Take your seat quickly and efficiently. Don't fart around talking to your companions or fidgeting with bag placement. The angry murmur you hear is the growing rage of the people stuck behind you in the aisle.

* If the delay is due to equipment issues, shut up and be grateful they're fixing the plane rather than letting you fly with a known problem. Getting home on time is indeed important, but getting home outweighs it dramatically.

* Modulate your voice. We don't all want to hear your conversation.

* Don't lean back on a daytime flight. Most daytime travelers, particularly on weekdays, are businesspeople. We want to work. When you lean back, we can't. When the person in front of you leans back, you can't, either.

* Be gracious when someone needs to go to the restroom and you're on the aisle. You'll want the favor someday, and there's no need to penalize someone for needing to go.

* Don't blame the flight attendants for the airline's policies. Really, they aren't the ones who decided you don't get snacks any longer.

* You're not the only one with problems, so don't act like you are. If you're uncomfortable, odds are that many other people are, too. If we all act like adults and behave well, the veneer of civilization will stay in place, as it should.

More will undoubtedly come to me, but you get the idea: behave well, and travel will be better for all of us.

On the road again: Portland, day 5

I’m home, and I’m very glad to be here. Travel today separated into two very distinct stages.

The first was about as good as modern air travel could be. After taking a wrong turn on the way out of town, I course-corrected and made it to the airport without incident. Traffic was better than normal for Portland at 6:00 a.m. The rental car agent was pleasant and efficient, as was the check-in agent.

I grabbed water and Diet Coke, then settled in to work. PDX provides free bandwidth, and the signal was good where I was setting. My first-class upgrade came through. My seatmate was pleasant and worked in tech. I worked almost the whole time, and all was well.

I had a two-hour layover at DFW, but my departure gate was only nine gates from the Admiral’s Club. I walked there, found a corner with great views and a power outlet, and worked the entire time.

Then the fun began.

I had managed neither exit row nor first-class upgrade for the flight to RDU. The plane was oversold--of course; when isn’t it, these days? Platinum status let me board early, where I had the privilege of watching businessman after businessman put his one carry-on piece in the overhead compartment instead of under the seat in front of him. I appreciate the selfish desire to do this, but on a completely fully flight it is a sure path to trouble, because some people have bags they must put overhead. As I expected, we were late in departing thanks to luggage issues we could have avoided had these jerks followed the rules of the community of fellow passengers.

The window seat next to me--I was lucky enough to get an aisle--was one of the last to fill. Coming down the aisle were two people: a tiny, cute Chinese woman with a killer smile, and a man who looked at lot like a magnified version of me. You know which one ended up sitting next to me. Even with him leaning against the fuselage and me leaning into the aisle, our shoulders touched the entire flight.

The two women in the seats immediately behind me began talking the moment they closed the airplane doors. One’s voice was pleasantly normal, but the other could pierce tank armor at thirty yards. You know which one dominated the conversation. She told our section of the plane so much about her various plastic surgeries--and there were many--that I had to check her out when I headed to the rest room. I have to give her and her surgeon credit: she looked amazing. I know from her endless prattling that she was 55, but I would have guessed her at 37.

I was very happy when we touched down and I was able to get out of that plane.

Dinner was the usual take-out Chinese, and then we headed to see The Forbidden Kingdom. I wanted to love this movie. I'm a huge Jet Li fan, a big Jackie Chan fan, and I love Chinese martial arts flicks. The trailer looked promising. I entered the theater with high hopes.

I left with a mixture of enjoyment and disappointment.

I loved Jet Li as the Monkey King. He rarely gets to have fun in movies, so it was a pleasure to see him laugh and play. Jackie Chan's performance ranged from sad to quite good. The supporting cast did solid to good jobs.

The problem was the lead. He was uninspiring at best and annoying and boring at worst. Every scene with him was weaker for his presence.

Overall, I can recommend this one only for some of the fight scenes (and not the opening one, alas, which was wirework at its worst).

Two things I’ve never seen before

So struck was I by two things I witnessed in the Denver airport today that I’m writing this entry on the plane home, with much of the day still ahead of me and the fate of my luggage up in the air. If something else remarkable happens, I may do an addendum, but for now I’m going to assume this entry will stand for the day.

Morning arrived as a mixed blessing. On the good side, I slept better than I have since I left home: four hours straight before awakening, and another stretch of three hours. The bad news was that despite keeping the heat off, the lack of a humidifier left me with a nose so clogged I could barely breathe through it and lips split and bloody.

I worked, took a long shower, worked some more, and rode the shuttle to the airport--all routine stuff for me on the road.

Airport security resembled a Disney ride line, with hundreds and hundreds of people ahead of us, but the TSA staffers were efficient and courteous, and my fellow travelers also generally behaved well. The wait was thus long but no more unpleasant than usual.

The first of the two unique events occurred after I had passed the ID check and while I was in line for the scanning machine. The woman in front of me, a petite thirty-something brunette in skin-tight blue jeans and a cream sweater so sheer and tight you could count the hooks in her bra strap (two), left the line to examine the trash barrel to our left. This barrel contained tons of things passengers remembered at the last second that they could not take through security. This woman slowed the line for almost two minutes as she dug through the trash and produced multiple items, which she then shoved into Baggies she had brought for the purpose. When she returned to the line, she must have caught the expression on my face, because she smiled, shrugged, and moved on.

The second event happened about a minute later. The archway through which I had to pass was serving two lines, ours and the one to the left. My turn was to come after a very large blond woman from the left line passed through it. This mid-thirties woman, who stood about my height and had to tip the scales somewhere north of three-fifty, wore all black and was dripping metal jewelry: three large earrings in each ear, multiple necklaces, a wide assortment of rings, and bracelets totaling at least three inches wide on each wrist. The security guy asked if she might like to take off some jewelry, but she shook her head, said she’d have no problems, and went through the detector.

It clanged.

The security guy smiled and said he’d now have to insist she take off all the jewelry. We all waited as she did, a process that understandably consumed more than a few moments. With a TSA bowl overflowing with jewelry now on its way through the scanner, she stepped through the detector.

It clanged again.

She said, “Oh, yeah!” and lifted her black sweater to expose an extremely large and very white stomach, at the apex of which sat the largest piece of belly jewelry I have ever seen. In my opinion, navel piercings on women can be very pretty, even quite sexy--but only on certain stomachs. As someone who is simply too fat himself, I am reluctant to criticize anyone’s weight, but I do believe that once you pass a certain size navel piercing is probably not a good idea. This woman obviously disagreed with my assessment, which in and of itself matters not at all, but the sheer size of her navel jewelry stunned me. It began with a large stone that sat atop a triangle of steel. Hanging from the bottom side of the triangle were strings of jewels, beads, and so on. From navel to bottom the contraption had to run at least five inches, and it was easily five or six inches wide at the bottom. Once she took it out, dropped it in a second white plastic bowl, and ran it through the machine, she passed easily through the security check.

Rarely do I experience such entertainment before 9:45 in the morning.

Addendum: Two items seem worthy of note.

First, all of my luggage arrived on the flight with me. The United luggage-handling folks had somehow managed to completely rip the cool name tag from the TED bag, but otherwise everything was intact.

Second, as a simple measure of the conference’s power, consider this: while discussing stories of two of the sessions, emotion so overcame me that I choked up and teared up. An amazing time.

Travel 1, me 0

Travel kicked my ass today.

The 5:45 a.m. wake-up call brought to an end another night of bad sleep in Aspen. Not once in my stay at the otherwise lovely Aspen Institute did I sleep a full two hours in a row. Today was no different.

I was at the front desk ready to go at 6:25, per the plan. The snow, unfortunately, was well ahead of me.

We stood in the long check-in line at the Aspen airport, made it in what looked like a close call but proved to be anything but, and then did the usual security crawl.

That was about as much fun as we had the rest of the day.

We ended up sitting in the terminal until around noon, at which point they booked us onto a plane that might be leaving for Denver ahead of our original (7:55 a.m. scheduled departure) flight. People greatly outnumbered seats, so sometimes we sat, other times we stood. I drank a bottle of water and a bottle of Diet Coke, but I didn't eat in the stupid belief that the time estimates the airport staff were making had some validity. I really can't blame them; no one can control the weather.

We boarded our commuter jet--and sat for three hours on the tarmac. First, we had to get our turn with the one de-icing truck. Our chance came, but the truck was out of fluid. By the time it filled up, we had rotated to the back of the three-plane queue. We finally got our shot, but the truck ran out mid-way through, so we waited some more. When our de-icing was complete, we went out onto the runway and the pilot announced that we had less than the mandatory two miles of visibility, but that visibility was coming and going, so we were going to hope for the best. We had a fifteen-minute window during which visibility could hit two miles and we could take off. After that, we would return to the end of the de-icing queue. Fortunately, about ten minutes into the window we took off.

The plane was jammed, as you would expect. My bag wouldn't fit under the seat in front of me because the guy in front of me had filled that space with his extra stuff. He refused to move it when I asked nicely, and by this point I was afraid that asking less nicely might take me and this man to bad places, so I shut up and perched in leg-cramping postures on my briefcase. The young man next to me fell asleep and twitched, each twitch causing him to elbow me in the side. I considered speaking, but by then I feared I would not be able to be nice. So, I reminded myself of many worse situations I've experienced, worked on breathing slowly and deeply, and took the discomfort and annoyance. I tried to lose myself in the book I was reading (Gibson's Spook Country), but unfortunately I finished it too early. I had a spare book, of course, as well as a notebook PC, but I could reach neither due to the crowding. I worked on the Overthrowing Heaven outline in my mind and fought for self-control.

The flight, though often bumpy and continually unpleasant, lasted less than forty-five minutes. We taxied a while, made it off the plane--the joy of personal space awaiting all of us--and walked quite some way to the nearest United Customer Service Center. It was, of course, thronged.

After about an hour and a half, maybe two, in line there--I intentionally never checked the time and concentrated on being pleasant--we made it to the front of the queue. A very pleasant United agent then said that our options were a red-eye on Frontier or the same flight Monday that we were supposed to have taken on Sunday. Work awaits, and we wanted to be home, so we opted for the red-eye. No such luck; it was full. So, tomorrow we spend most of the day flying home. I lost my aisle seat, of course, so I get to spend over four hours in a middle seat. Still, that's tomorrow's problem, not today's.

Our luggage was basically unavailable. The man said we could try to get our bags from baggage claim, but that doing so would take at least two hours and most likely much more. We gave up on that option and choose to have them send the luggage to Raleigh with us. I don't expect to see my bags tomorrow, but so it goes; with luck, we'll all get our belongings one day soon.

We then needed rooms. Calling around was not a good option, because my phone's battery was running low and the charger was--where else?--in my checked bag. Gina came to our rescue and found us rooms at the rather nice Denver Airport Marriott, which is, in the way of big-city airport hotels, fifteen minutes from the airport. A forty-buck cab ride later, we announced ourselves at the registration desk--where the clerk said we had no reservation. I trusted Gina to have been right, and she had given us confirmation numbers, so we pushed back, and the clerk dug through some alternate reservation systems. He finally found the room reservations; the original clerk had entered my name as "VAN/NAME/MARK", thus confusing their system.

I've been working in my room for some time. I have no change of clothing, and my garments are on the funky side, so I am airing my socks--which leaves my exposed feet rather cold. If I warm the room, my sinuses will pay, so I decided to live with the cold. My feet became too cold to tolerate easily, however, so I adapted to my environment: wrapping one's feet in a large bath towel will keep them quite warm.

I unfortunately then discovered that getting so absorbed in your work that you stand and move quickly with your feet tightly wrapped can lead to amusing acrobatics. Fortunately, neither the glass of water nor the glass of Diet Pepsi spilled, and the notebook is safe. I will now pay more attention to my feet when I stand.

I have not eaten in twenty-four hours, and my day has sucked, but I am current enough on my work to suffice, and if this is the worst that life has to give me, I am lucky indeed. Or so I try to tell myself.

Time for calls home and then too much dinner, as I stress eat, but with luck at least the food will taste good. I hate the lack of self-control that leads me to overeat in situations like this, but I need an outlet right now, and that's the easiest one available.

I look forward to being home.

Home again

Today was a travel day, the kind of travel day that grabs you by the throat and says, "Welcome to the packing plant, Meat!"

The best part of the day was not having to get up insanely early. I time-shift to new time zones pretty much instantly, so for me the wake-up call came too early, but at least I had almost seven hours of rack time. Sweet.

The San Francisco Airport Authority some years ago decided that returning rental cars was entirely too easy. Millions of dollars later, the process is now sufficiently complicated that if you miss one sign, you can end up in Reno--where they'll charge you an extra fee for the car return.

After overcoming this challenge, we rode the airport train the many stops to our terminal, waited to check in, waited for security, waited for what proved to be a passable lunch at a taqueria, and waited to get into the Admiral's Club. Sense a theme?

Our flight to DFW was late due to weather. When it arrived, it was a classic case of spam in a can--and we were the spam. The large, obnoxious man in front of me leaned back so far I had to work by holding my laptop open in a V in my lap and reaching inside it, but I did finish some work.

We pulled up to the gate at DFW a luxurious 30 minutes before our flight to RDU was to take off. Much speed-walking through the terminals and AirTrain riding later, we made it to our next flight--where we were again the spam.

To my pleasure and amazement, we landed on time, our luggage arrived, and I've finished my writing for the day.

Circumstances conspired to stop me from working, but they failed. Life's small victories are victories nonetheless. I hope your day included a few.

Travel day

Worked late, got less sleep than I wanted, and then resumed the cycle. Worked, worked out, showered, packed, ate, and then dove into the joys of modern airport travel. The lines were unpleasant but no more so than usual.

American Airlines gave me one piece of good news: its folks had found the glasses I'd left on the plane on the way to Boston, and they held them for me at Logan Airport. I was pleased to have them back.

The Admiral's Club failed me--me and many others--because we could never get full connectivity. So, no email for me, but much frustration.

The flight itself was bumpy but tolerable, though on a regional commuter jet so cramped I could not work on my notebook PC. Frustrating.

Family dinner was at Cinelli's tonight; that was fun.

It's after five in the morning, and I'm still working, so that tells you how it's gone.

I also had the pleasure of giving myself two allergy shots tonight. That's really overstating the hassle, however. Though I had a severe needle phobia when I began taking the allergy shots over five years ago, I'm long since over that problem. I can watch as I push the needles into my skin, and it simply doesn't bother me anymore.

Back to work for a bit more, and then I will finally crash.

Oops

Oops, I forgot to post Thursday night. I was so exhausted, I did the work I had to do, then collapsed.

My O'Hare experience Thursday on United contributed to the exhaustion. First, they delayed my plane a bit. Okay, that happens. We board, and all seems well.

Not so fast: one of the plane's air conditioners isn't working. We sit for over an hour while they try to repair it.

No luck.

Away we go, off this plane, down to the other end of the terminal, and into an already overcrowded gate where we wait some more.

Finally, we board! The entire sold-out flight releases its breath, relaxes as the crew shuts the door, and then...

They announce we have to wait for catering.

We wait.

We finally take off. We're going to be only about an hour and fifty minutes late. Hurrah!

We land in Raleigh, taxi to the gate, grab our bags, fill the aisles, and...

wait. They can't get the jetbridge over to the plane.

Twenty minutes later, they tell us all to sit, which we do so a small vehicle can tow the plane out of our gate and into the one next to it.

I heart business travel.

Best line overhead on the plane, from a rather attractive woman with an extremely foul manner: "No, d**n it! He's doing it, and I'm going to do it! I've got forty-eight hours, and I'm going to get laid!"