For years, I’ve jokingly told people “business travel is glamorous” which to me, it’s just the opposite. Some people think that those of us who travel as part of our job live the high life on an expense account. That would be great, if it had any basis in fact.
I flew to LGA (this is sort of a Travel Blog, you should know which airport that is…New York LaGuardia) to close a deal. I got a decent fare on Southwest Airlines, my favorite way to fly. Car, hotel, no problem.
Unfortunately, the weather on the east coast was a little volatile so my flight out was delayed by an hour and a half and, we were backed up getting in to LGA for another 50 minutes as we loitered over Pennsylvania waiting our turn.
Leaving was worse. When I woke up on Thursday, I had a text from Southwest telling me that my flight was already delayed, this was 9 hours in advance. Fortunately, I used my new found time after I closed my deal to visit another prospect.
Arriving at the airport, the flight was further delayed. We finally boarded at 1610 an hour after the original departure time. The best was yet to come. As we joined the line of 25(that I could see) planes taxiing out for take off, the world came to a stop. The wind had changed so, we got to flip the airport (go to the other end of the runway).
New York in the summer is hot and very humid, the cabin of the plane was worse with 160 hot humans adding to the already intemperate conditions. Southwest did a great job informing us that it would be another 20-30 minutes, maybe, before we got to take off.
Almost 3.5 hours after we boarded the plane, we finally took off and, the cabin started to cool down. Earlier in my life, I would have let all this get to me. I would have been mad (at whom, I have no idea) and it would have left me in a foul mood. Maybe age, maturity and possibly my Camino experience have helped me understand that being mad about something that I cannot control is a total waste of my time and energy.
I found my happy place, listened to music, read my book and chilled (maybe a bad use of a word under the circumstances). It was strange that even though I was hot and tired, I was a peace with the situation. Maybe old dogs can learn new tricks.
So, for those of you that may think that business travel is all fun and games, that was my day. Dinner was a KIND Bar, the chocolate had melted but it was still good, I had no lunch. I got home about 4 hours late and all I could think about were the 2 ladies next to me who missed their connections…they got to enjoy another night is a hotel on their tab. I hope they got to Cali to see a fiance and to Birmingham to see grand-children.
Almost forgot, we had a unruly passenger in the back, the flight attendants got him calmed down. Six DPD Officers met him at the gate, I have no idea what time he got home.