Slowly recovering…
Add comment October 27th, 2006 David Bush - Iasta
I thought this might be a good day to reflect on last week and trials that besiege sourcing professionals who are at the mercy of the travel Gods. I feel your pain and am officially getting too old for this. To recap:
Monday –> Leaving Las Vegas from an annual weekend bender with friends that I have gotten in trouble with since 1976. In retrospect, this would be the only issue free day. Fly directly in to St Louis for meetings.
Tuesday–> It has rained for 48 hours straight in St Louis, canceling the Division series that night and bringing people to be reminded of Noah’s Ark. Truly miserable weather with traffic having its normal issues. Flight to Houston that night is not a problem but the rain at IAH has already caused tons of cancellations outbound…
Wednesday–> Houston is raining - surprise. More troublesome…the flash floods have caused so much damage that the locals have rented all the cars. One of the biggest airports in the country and not a single rental company has had a car for over a week. I get into Houston with no plan for transportation. My wing man, Jason, has been on the horn for hours and manages to secure a returned car minutes before I land. I beeline for the counter and snag the car, avoiding a costly cab situation but still paying $120/day for a horrible Taurus. Let the fun begin now!! After very good meetings/presentations, I arrive at IAH for my 7:15pm flight. In retrospect, I had nothing to worry about with time. Delays allow me to spend 4.5 hours in a basement terminal with no AC and about 1000 people in a similar boat. The closest way to describe this would be like a refugee camp, again miserable. I make my way to the only hot spot in the whole airport - the international terminal (E). They also have very big beers there, so I camp out for 2.5 hours.
Thursday –> Louisville arrival at 300am. I am not sure what is going on but my bag is not on my plane. Some how, it shows up 20 minutes later on another flight while I am in line to fill out the delivery forms. When I happily go to retrieve it, I am surprised by its sudden spike in weight. Nice…it spent the evening on the tarmac in Houston during a driving rainstorm. Thanks Continental, everything not on me is soaked. I get a few hours sleep and iron my clothes dry. Now I have a tired, loopy buzz and go into my next meetings sharp until 3pm when I need coffee. I go home barely awake, thankfully not driving. We drop off the rental car, I roll into home at 9pm. The magically mystery tour is over and I lay in bed, unable to sleep until 1am…
Friday –> I realize I left my damn ties in the backseat of the rental car. Sweet! I get to go back to the airport on the weekend!
This was domestic only. I am sure everyone out in purchasing-ville has had similar adventures and probably 5x worse when you sprinkle in a little Asia.
Zzzzzzz
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