?!

I was talking to Moms today, and I told her about all of the details from yesterday’s trip home. She said: “Wow! This has really been the trip from hell!” I can’t say that I was expecting that from her, but that’s what she said.

 It all started with the delay in my flight from O’Hare to LAX, which was delayed by about an hour because the people before us couldn’t keep their lunch within themselves. The cabin crew had to do a real deep-clean before we were able to board, and then we had to be rescheduled into the departure line on the runway. It was awesome.

So after that part of the trip, things went okay. And by “okay” I mean totally nuts. It’s one thing to travel for work and have a certain list of items to address/resolve, but it’s entirely different when you are relying on coworkers to do part of the work and then have to go back and redo everything that they “did”. Did I mention that I love my job?

On Thursday morning (but only if you consider “before the light of day” to be morning), I woke up and turned on the TV to have some background noise while I got ready for the day. To my suprise, the news folks were reporting a fire in downtown LA, which meant that it was seriously only a few blocks away from my hotel. So I took pictures.

This was the pillar of smoke that I could barely see rising from the fire in the early dawn:

And this is the TV screen while the incident was being reported:

I can’t recall any other time that I was watching a news broadcast whtat was reporting a major incident that I was witnessing for myself at the same time. It was an interesting “first.”

Thursday night was already mentioned here (see “Official Report: Medusa Lounge”), so I don’t feel the need to say much more. The only exception is that I feel a need to find a similar lounge-type atmosphere close(r) to home. Oh, and one more thing. We left a gift in the LA office before we left:

Friday was no less interesting. We left the hotel at an exciting 5:30am to get to the airport for a 7:15 flight. That part was fine, except that I maintain the stance that there are TOO many people that don’t know how to get through airport security. Still. We’ve been in this lockdown-mode for almost a decade, and there are still rookies in front of me at every airport. The flight from LA to Chicago was fine, but then the flight from Chicago to P-town was cancelled. Not delayed — cancelled. So, luckily, the Admin Assistant at the office arranged for me to pick up a rental car, which was awesome, but then I waited for more than 90 minutes for my luggage to be redirected to the baggage claim there at O’Hare. It had already been moved to a different plane that was supposed to fly to Peoria much later in the evening, but I just wanted to get it, get the car, and get the heck home. After waiting that long, I ditched the idea of driving home WITH my luggage and accepted the option of just plain driving home.

Somewhere in the wait for luggage, my coworker/travel companion managed to pick up a 21-year-old girl who needed a ride to Peoria. It was interesting to hear her call her mom and friends and just say “I’m fine. I’m hitchhiking home with a couple of guys that I’ve never met before. I’ll see you soon!”. Sadly, I don’t know if she could have found two other guys that were more harmless that us, so I guess she lucked out. The remainder of the drive was entirely uneventful, though.

After we returned to Peoria, we went to the airport to see if, by some chance, our luggage had arrived there ahead of us. It was a long shot, but the remaining flights from Chicago to Peoria were all cancelled that eveining, so it was going to be until Saturday before we would get our stuff. We talked to the guy at the ticket counter, and he assured us that we would be able to pick up our luggage at the airport sometime during the day today. However, the airlines decided to deliver our belongings to us at our homes, instead. This would normally have been fine, even appreciated, but I wasn’t home when they came by. So, instead of calling me, they locked my luggage in the cab of my truck – with the keys inside. Genius. Absolutely genius. I then had to call Moms and have her stop by with a spare set of keys so that I could retrieve my luggage and start laundry.

So that was my week… Is anyone jealous?