A fitting tale for a return to blogging

First an apology to my loyal readers for my absence over the past couple of weeks. Partly work has overtaken my free time due to a promotion with a whole host of new responsibilities and travel, and partly because simply I have been talking more to my readers on the phone. It is amazing how quickly phone time can eat into one’s free time, but in a fabulous way of course.

But now into a little more of my travel and tales of interest. Today, well I guess yesterday at this point, I was all set to embark on a trip to London. A mere 10 hour flight from San Francisco, not the longest but certainly a flight well worth upgrading on. Even with my wonderful status even I do not get upgraded every time and was thus placed in a comfortable seat in the middle of a massive 747-400. Now for those of you who travel frequently or even for those of you who do so infrequently continue to read if you want to know how to be the most popular passenger. They board this massive 300+ passenger plane filled to the gills without a single open seat with five minutes to spare, just when we all thought we would leave even a couple of minutes early the pilot announces that somehow the food crew had boarded not one, not two, but three food carts that were absolutely empty. Somehow that didn’t seem proper so of course they were going to take the time and bring on the correct ones. No problem, another 15 minutes and we will be out of here. Food transition complete, all jetways and vehicles moved away for taxi and can you guess what happened? One of our fellow passengers decided this was the optimal time to get violently sick. We are talking wave after wave of nausea complete with full body convulsions. I go over to lend my assistance (with ample gloves I would point out) and quickly recommend that we remove this passenger prior to takeoff. A shocker, but somehow the entire staff of the plane agrees. This leads to an hour long task of removing passenger with baggage and then disinfecting an entire row of seats. Somehow for the rest of the flight I am everyone’s best friend, as if I somehow averted some major disaster for the entire plane rather than just comfort a man in physical distress. By the way if you are one that likes to drink on a plane this is an incredibly easy way to get rip roaring drunk for free as every steward will offer you any alcoholic drink you desire. Of course one needs to question that for the minute I drink one I am no longer allowed to render assistance, so that makes the entire situation a bit ironic. Either way the flight ended up being quite uneventful save the wonderful care and attention from all the wonderful staff of my United flight.

But wait we are not done yet. I get off the plane and jump into the cab listing my hotel which I was lead to believe is the closest to my corporate offices that I will be working out of for the next three days. I query the taxi driver to ensure this is correct once we start to leave, and he actually states that there is a Hilton closer if I would like, but keep in mind since he is computer dispatched he would need to return to the airport (we are only a mere 5 minutes out) and get re-dispatched. Not a problem. Well to make a long story short, the new hotel is literally connected to the airport and due to traffic a walk that I could have done from the airport terminal ends up being almost $30. Oops. Lets just blame the 10 hour flight shall we?

As for what else has been going on in my life. Besides a trip to Orlando last week, London this week and a whole slew of work that has pretty much been my life. Fear not I am not actually complaining about this it just means that a vast preponderance of my time is spent running around trying to do the work of three. Impossible for a mere mortal, thankfully that does not apply to me. Now I have got to catch up on work so more later, this time I promise.