Be Careful What You Wish For

Well it’s not tropical, and it’s not Christmas, but I guess I am getting my wish. I am headed to Miami this weekend. It is a work thing, but who cares. It is still four days in Miami, two of which have nothing but a round of golf on the schedule. Sometimes I love my job. Four days at a nice resort – all expenses paid. Hopefully it will go better than my last trip.

I know I haven’t posted for a while, so let me tell you about the last trip. I had to fly to Kansas City last week. Yep, that week…the one with the bad weather. It was also my first try at flying out of Reagan National and not Dulles. It was the only flight I could get. Surprisingly, flights to KC are very hard to get unless you book well in advance. Now all you people in KC, please don’t take that to mean that I don’t like visiting your city or that I don’t understand why others do…wait…that is pretty much exactly what I mean.

I checked online before heading to the airport and my flight was still listed as on time. It wasn’t until I got there that I was told it was going to be delayed. So I waited. And waited. And waited. For three hours before they finally cancelled my flight. Right in time for me to have to drive home during the middle of rush hour traffic in DC. And believe me when I say that traffic sucks here when you are on the wrong freeway. However, in this instance it is a little worse than you can imagine. You see the freeway that I would take home becomes a “carpool only” freeway between 4:00 - 6:30 PM. That’s right, the whole freeway is off limits to those of us with no friends willing to drive around in the car with us. I really had no idea how I was supposed to go home. I called a coworker to ask for directions. His response: Find a restaurant. Have dinner and wait until 6:30 to drive home. Nice.

So that’s what I did. The whole trip was basically a five hour excursion to the airport so I could get my shoes polished.

BTW – you know the airlines won’t refund your money if your trip is cancelled due to bad weather? I got them to give me credit, but they wouldn’t refund the money. It is not like I could go the next day, my meeting would have been over by the time I got there.

Speaking of travel…looks like I might be on the west coast for the holiday. I have to go to Seattle on the 20th. Might as well stay over and go home. No promises, but set another plate for Christmas dinner. And I was so looking forward to Aruba. Oh well, maybe next year.