Therein lies a tale, but it had nothing to do with the weather. I had to go to Panama about a month after the invasion and for a variety of reasons (primarily Pan Am's incompetence and an extremely overbooked flight), Pan Am gave my seat away. Airline schedules in and out of Panama were very limited at the time, so a group of us who had been bumped (including a gal who announced she was smuggling in stun guns in her luggage that had gone on the Pan Am flight) spent several hours waiting as standby for flights on various airlines before finally getting seats on Lloyd Aero Bolivia.

We arrived at the gate at 11:59 p.m. What they neglected to tell us before we deplaned (or I would have stolen a pillow and blanket from the plane!) was that curfew began at midnight.

So -- we got to "sleep" in a confined area of the bombed out airport under military guard. Bad enough to try to sleep on a hard floor, but the guards did patrol our area and the clinking sound of their weapons and thump of their boots made the land of Nod an impossible destination. I wished I had a camcorder with me to make a mini documentary for my friends who don't travel about the true "glamour" of business travel.

Curfew ended at 6 am, so I headed to the hotel, took a shower...and headed to the meeting room to facilitate a planning session that began at 7:30.