Biz Trip Gone Bad

Before I begin, let me just acknowledge that there are stories far worse than the one I'm about to tell. Nevertheless, as this is the most recent episode in my world, here goes...

So, I'm ready to embark on a little journey to Connecticut to meet with a client. All is well so far, the partner I'm traveling with and I made it to LAX by about noon (plenty of time to make our 1:15 flight). Just before we head down to the gate to board, I was called to the ticket counter where I was informed that I had been upgraded to business class. How exciting! I've never flown business class before. This trip won't be so bad after all, I thought.

Then it begins...over the loudspeaker, we hear that inclement weather in the midwest has caused delays, so we don't board the plane until about 1:30. Once the plane is boarded, the captain comes on the speaker to announce that there are no available gates for us in NY, so we had to wait in the plane, on the runway until about 3:20 (ugh! What a bummer!). Oh well, what can you do? Can't control the weather.

The flight goes relatively smoothly. I had a nice meal, got some work done, great. After five hours, we finally touch down and taxi for a minute or two, then stop. The captain then announces that there is a wicked crazy traffic jam at JFK and we have to wait for a minute before we can make our way to the gate. Well...that minute turned into an hour, again just sitting in the plane on the tarmac (ugh, again!). What makes matters worse is they practically turned off the A/C, so the cabin got hot and stuffy while we sat there and waited.

Finally, made it to the terminal well past midnight, rented a car and made our way up to Connecticut. By about 2:15 am, we finally pulled up to the hotel, where a group was checking in just before us. They were saying the hotel was booked and they were turning people away. Once we get to the counter, we let the dude know that we had reservations, but he still paused for a very long time, frantically typing on his keyboard, muttering something about some notes the previous shift left for him. Finally, the partner asked if they sold our rooms to someone else, to which we didn't get an immediate response. So, as we're waiting at the counter, thinking the worst, he finally finds some rooms for us and I crawl into bed at around 3:00 am, only to wake up in about four hours for a client meeting.

Rise and shine, we get ready, walk to the car like zombies and we're on our way. Now, I've never been to Connecticut and we're on our way into the sticks when all of a sudden, the GPS battery dies and our cigarette lighter is broken. Just when we think things couldn't be much worse, we're now in the middle of some rural CT town with no directions and no idea how to find the client. However, much to our delight, we pass a tiny little AVIS lot (how fortuitous!), swap cars, make it to the meeting and had a fine day from then on.

As bad as it seemed at the time, at least the flight was better than this...



Anyway, just wanted to rant a little about the exciting adventure. Feel free to share your fun travel misadventures.

Cheers!