In the spirit of 1993gt40's wonderful "A Consultant's Life" series, I'd like to write about my life as a road warrior. I'm also in my mid-twenties, and I do support for a large software company. I used to be a bit embarrassed saying "I do computer support," as it tends to evoke images of telling technophobic grandmothers not to use their CD drive as a cupholder, but I've gotten over that. Besides, my job is nothing like that. My team supports our largest customers� companies who you've heard of, companies who have IT staffs that (usually) know what the CD drive is for. We do a great deal of onsite support, which is what turned me into a road warrior.

What I love most about my job is the variety. One week, I might be helping a customer analyze their environment, and recommending changes. The next week, I might plan on being in the office all week, but instead receive a last-minute phone call to go onsite for some crisis situation at a customer site. The next week, I might deliver some training to another customer. I'm sometimes a consultant, sometimes a product specialist, sometimes a crisis manager, often a psychiatrist, occasionally a punching bag. It's the perfect job for someone who likes working with people... and gets bored easily.

A few weeks ago, I had one of my more consultant-like gigs, with one of my regular customers in Pasadena. It is unusual for me to visit a customer more than once, but the Pasadena guys are an exception; they use a product that I am particularly strong in, and their big boss likes me a lot, so they bring me out once every two months or so. I like going there too. Their office is right in the heart of Pasadena, which is a really cute little town with tons of shops and restaurants along Colorado Blvd, the main drag. I fell in love with it the moment I saw it. Another plus, for traveling on an expense account at least, is that hotels in general are so expensive there that the Westin is actually in budget, which is a rare treat for me -- usually we're only allowed to stay at Hampton Inns and the like.

I caught an early flight out of SJC on Monday morning. I had been debating between flying AA from SJC to LAX, or flying Southwest from SJC to BUR. BUR is much more convenient to Pasadena, and I definitely prefer Southwest's 737s over AA's regional jets, but the first Southwest flight didn't get in till 9:20 AM. Instead, I found myself boarding an Eagle flight at the ungodly hour of 5:45 AM. Most of California had been pelted with rain for the previous few weeks, so the flight was quite bumpy, which was particularly annoying because it caused me to keep sliding around in those stupid leather Eagle seats, when all I wanted to do was sleep. Eventually we broke through the clouds and landed at LAX's satellite terminal. It was pouring rain, and we had to walk outside to get from the plane to the terminal, then back outside to gather our checked-at-planeside bags, then back outside once again to get from the terminal to the shuttle bus that would take us to the main terminal. Thanks, LAX.

By the time I'd gathered all my stuff, gotten to Terminal 4, walked to the ground transportation area, waited for the Avis bus, waited some more for the Avis bus (the Avis operation at LAX seems to be particularly poorly run), gotten to the Avis location, and picked up my car, it was 8:30. By the time I fought my way through Los Angeles rush-hour traffic to get to Pasadena, it was 9:30. Next time, I'll have to give Southwest and BUR more consideration.

On this particular trip, I was working side-by-side with a consultant to plan an upgrade to a newer version of our product. It was a very relaxed visit, since we were just working in a lab environment. I was back at the Westin by 5 pm just about every day, which gave me plenty of time to take advantage of another benefit of Pasadena: The 24 Hour Fitness club that is right around the corner from the Westin. I'm training for an Ironman triathlon (that's a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, 26.2 mile run -- crazy, I know!), so finding places to work out when I'm on the road is really important. This 24 Hour Fitness has lots of equipment and even a decent pool, which is a big plus for me.

We wrapped up mid-afternoon on Friday, LAX's security lines were surprisingly reasonable, I didn't slide around quite so much in the Eagle seats, and I was back home in San Jose in time for dinner. Can't beat that. I had no trips scheduled for the next week, which meant I had a whole week of working out of the "office" to look forward to. Up until mid-December, I lived in Dallas, where "working out of the office" meant actually going in to our main office. But now that I am living in the Bay Area, I get to work from home, which I really enjoy. While I'm at home, I spend my time taking issues that customers want to work over the phone or via email. I also get the chance to work on special projects, such as developing training. It's a really nice break from traveling, and is one of the reasons why my team manages to have a fairly decent retention rate. In fact, at 25, I am easily the youngest person on my team; many of my teammates are in their 30s, married, with children. They generally try to stay in the office a little more, while the young'uns like me shoulder more of the traveling burden. Not that I mind, at all!

That is all for now, but I have a ton of trips already scheduled for the next few weeks, so hopefully I'll have the chance to do a new installment soon. Unless y'all are totally bored, in which case, I will bug off!

I'm sitting in ORD right now with nothing better to do, so here's my entry for this past week. It was supposed to be a fairly easy week. I was scheduled to teach a workshop at a customer site in the Bay Area on Monday and Tuesday, then have three days in the "office" (i.e. my dining room table) to prepare for another workshop delivery next week.

The workshop delivery went fine. As I was packing up to leave on Tuesday, my cell phone rang. From the number, I was pretty sure it was one of our coordinators, calling to send me somewhere. That's how it works. A request for an onsite person can come in anytime, day or night. The coordinators check to see who is available to fulfill the request and start calling.

This particular request was for someone to go down to San Diego for a few days, to work with a customer who was experiencing a problem with one of our products. The problem was holding up a huge upgrade to a newer version of the product. They wanted someone for the next morning, but were willing to wait till Thursday.

When I first joined my current team, a little over a year ago, I jumped at any chance to travel. Now, I'm a bit more picky. I didn't want to go to San Diego. I had my hands full with other work. But the coordinator cornered me on my home phone (no caller ID) when I was already running late for swim practice, and I figured it would be quicker to just take the trip, rather than try to get out of it.

I was able to put off the trip till Thursday, which gave me nearly 36 hours before I needed to leave. For my team, that is a lot of notice. I've gotten calls at 6 AM to be on a plane at 9 AM, giving me three hours to catch up on the details of the customer's problem, make all my travel arrangements, pack, and get to the airport. I've also gotten calls at 11 or 12 o'clock at night, and had about seven hours to do all that as well as try to get some sleep. I've had teammates who went into the office in the morning, expecting a normal day of work, and ended up on a plane by mid-afternoon. And teammates who have gotten calls at 1 AM, asking them to get up, get dressed, and go help out a nearby customer right away. Obviously, it can be stressful, and it can seriously mess with your plans (not to mention your sleep schedule), but I also find it pretty exciting. It certainly keeps you on your toes.

I spent Wednesday in my home "office," getting as much work done as possible, then left for San Diego early on Thursday morning. Another stressful part of these last-minute cases is that you never know what you're getting dropped into. Sometimes, you get there and the problem is fixed; sometimes, it's gotten worse since you left home. Sometimes, you're working with just one or two people; often, you find yourself facing a "war room" of 10-20 stressed-out customers, alone, and all you can think is, "12 hours ago, I thought I'd be in my nice, quiet office right now."

Fortunately, this visit turned out to be a piece of cake. The problem that the customer was experiencing had actually disappeared on Monday; mostly, they were looking for reassurance that it was not caused by the newer version of our product, which I was easily able to provide. In fact, I spent much of the day a bit bored, trying to stay busy. In many ways, I would have rather had some major problems to fix. At least then, I feel like there is something I can do. On trips like this one, I feel like I've dropped everything and rearranged my entire life -- for nothing.

At least I was able to get out of the office by about 5 PM on Thursday, and then the customer let me leave before noon on Friday morning. Sweet! I called my corporate travel agent to rebook my ticket home. She asked, "Do you want to fly standby on the earlier flight, or do you want me to reissue the ticket?" I knew I'd have no problem getting home on standby, but the ticket was fully refundable (it is company policy to fly on fully-refundable tickets for these last-minute trips), so I figured we might as well reissue it, as long as I had her on the phone.

I got to the airport, got onto my flight, and settled in for a little pre-takeoff nap. After everyone got seated, the gate agent came on the PA system: "Due to the weather [it was raining], we've had to take on some extra fuel, and we are overweight. So we're looking for six volunteers to get off. We are offering $300 vouchers, and a seat on the next flight to SJC. And if you're flying standby, obviously we cannot accommodate you, so you will need to get off as well."

Well, that was a no-brainer! The next flight left just two hours later, and would still get me in to SJC earlier than the flight I had planned on taking (before the customer released me early). Plus, $300 in compensation for getting bumped from a 1-hour Eagle flight, which I hadn't even paid for in the first place? I was off the plane and at the podium before the gate agent! And I was quite thankful that I had chosen to get the ticket reissued, rather than flying standby -- the standby passengers didn't get any compensation at all.

I was hoping to get bumped again from the next flight, since it was still raining and that flight was also nearly full, but alas, they were not looking for volunteers. It was still a great flight. I slept most of the way and woke up just as we were flying over the foothills during the descent into SJC. It was beautiful and sunny over the foothills, which are draped in green, with hardly a building in sight. They simply fascinate me, coming so recently from Texas, where there is no topography like that. As we flew into the valley, the houses got more and more dense, and there was a dark storm cloud covering the entire area, like it was being "held" there by the mountains. I think that is cool as well, how the scenery can change so drastically in the space of just a few miles.

I got home and got on the phone to purchase two tickets to Austin -- my fiance and I had been planning on going back to Texas to look at wedding sites in a few weeks anyway, and my voucher more than halved the cost of our tickets. Not a bad afternoon's "work."

Yes, that is something I did not mention in my last entry: Somewhere, in the midst of all this traveling, I've managed to pick up a fiance . Our story is pretty long and complicated, so I'll give you the abbreviated version. We met in August 2002, shortly after I moved to Dallas from our company's office in Charlotte; at the time, he was on the same team as one of my best friends, so that is how we met. In February 2003, he got a job with my "dream team," the team that I had been hoping to join basically since the day I started with our company. That July, I got the opportunity I'd be waiting for: A position on that team opened up, and the managers were interested in hiring me. When I applied, my now-fiance and I were just very close friends, but we "officially" started dating shortly before my interview. I got the job, which is the job I hold now. In retrospect, we probably should have been more concerned about working on the same team, but we really weren't. Maybe we were just stupid and blinded by love (quite possibly), but there were two other reasons why we weren't so concerned: 1) although I was offered the job in August, my start date was not till November, so I had some time to figure something out if things went sour between us, and 2) we had known each other so well, for so long, that from the start, we both basically knew that this was it.

Anyway, it worked out fine. My company is totally cool with employees dating each other -- offhand, I can think of eight of my colleagues who are married to or dating other employees, including my manager at the time. We were on the same team for over a year and never had any problems.

You already know my job requires a lot of travel, so you've probably guessed that he was traveling a lot too. In some ways, it was easier to date a fellow road warrior. He was certainly much more understanding about these drop-everything trips. But in other ways, it was much harder, especially because neither of us had a regular travel schedule. One time, early in our relationship, I had a trip from Sun-Wed evening; right after I got home, thrilled to see him again, he got one of those midnight calls and left on Thu morning. Other times, I would have a trip one week while he stayed home, and he would have a trip the next week while I stayed home. It was not unusual for us to go three, four, five weeks or more, where we would only see each other on the weekends, if that.

Appropriately, he proposed to me during one of those brief weekends together, shortly before Thanksgiving last year. He had just gotten home from a two-week trip to Toronto on Friday. He proposed on Sunday morning; once I had recovered from the shock, I had to go pack for my own trip, also to Toronto. Yes, he had chosen to propose while I was on my way to the one place where I have no cell phone access. I was literally telling my dad the big news while waiting in the security line, my grandmother as I was walking down the jet bridge, my best girlfriend the moment my plane touched down back in the USA later that week.

Around the same time, he decided to take the next step in his career. He applied for a job in California with one of our development teams, and he got it. So that is what brought us out here. He still travels some for his new job, always on short notice, but they are mostly one-night trips, so it's not so bad.

Now, if we could only get me to stay put for a bit longer too... nah. I love what I do, and he understands that. Still, we both know that we have just a few more years left of this. When we have a family, neither of us wants to be on the road.

Well, I'm not sure if anyone is actually reading this thread, but I'm having fun writing it, so I'll keep at it for now. This past week was pretty dull (aside for being 2-for-3 on police presence at my chosen hotels), so instead of boring you with it, I'm going to "flash back" to one of my more memorable business trips.

It was late on a Monday night in February, 2004 -- almost exactly a year ago to the day, as a matter of fact. I'd been on my team for about three months. As I mentioned in my last entry, my then-boyfriend (now fiance) was on the same team. We had not told anyone that we were dating, mostly because I didn't want my new teammates to see me as "his girlfriend." I wanted them to get to know me for what I could do first.

On that particular night, my boyfriend and I were hanging out at his apartment, watching TV and getting some work done, when his home phone rang. It was our manager, calling about a customer issue that required an onsite visit. The customer was having problems with a specific product; my fiance knows a little about this particular product, but everyone knows it is one of my specialties, and he mentioned that to my manager. So my manager said, "Yeah, I've been trying to get in touch with her. Do you have any idea where she is?" Of course, my boyfriend knew perfectly well that I was sitting right next to him, but he mumbled some story about me being at lacrosse practice (like anyone is at a sports practice at 10 pm!).

When he hung up and told me what was going on, I immediately logged in to check my email. Sure enough, my manager had emailed me an hour or so before about taking this trip. She had also tried calling my cell phone, but at the time, my charger had just died. I had a new one on order, but for the time being, I couldn't charge my cell phone.

This presented a problem. I was eager to call my manager back right away and tell her I could go on the trip, but I couldn't use my cell phone, and I was nervous about using my boyfriend's phone because I thought she might have caller ID. I considered going back to my own apartment, which was only about 10 minutes away, but laziness won out, and I called her back from my boyfriend's phone.

If she did have caller ID, she didn't say anything when I called. She just asked, "So, how do you feel about North Dakota?" It turns out the customer was in Fargo. I could not be happier -- I'd never been to North Dakota! So she gave the trip to me, and I logged in to weather.com, where I discovered that it was about -20 degrees Fahrenheit in Fargo at that time. Now, I grew up in the Northeast, where it does get fairly cold, but it rarely drops below about +20 degrees. I had no concept of what -20 degrees would even feel like! I packed a couple of warm sweaters and two winter coats and headed off to Fargo the next morning.

The first thing I learned about Fargo is that it is the best place to go if you want to steal a car. Like most rental car agencies, the Avis at Fargo airport left the keys in the ignition of my car. (In fact, they started the car for me and left the heat running full blast. It was so toasty when I got in that I had to roll down a window!) But unlike most rental car agencies, the Avis at Fargo airport does not check your rental contract when you leave the lot. There is no security at the lot exit at all -- you just drive off, hopefully with the car you're supposed to have! So if you ever need a new car, just fly into Fargo, go to the rental car lot, and look for a running car! Also, it is so cold in Fargo that about 5-10 minutes before someone is planning on leaving a place, they usually go out to their car and start it, so it warms up. So when you go to restaurants or malls, you'll see lots of cars in the parking lot, keys in the ignition, with no driver in sight. It is a bit unnerving for someone from a big city.

The second thing I learned about Fargo is that it is really frickin' cold. I decided to bypass the standard car warm-up when I went to leave the customer site the first night -- my big-city intuition would not allow me to leave my keys in the car ignition, and besides, my hotel was just a few blocks away from the customer, so I figured I could make it even in a cold car. But by the time I reached my hotel, my hands were so cold that I could barely hold the pen to sign my check-in slip. Yes, they had completely frozen up in, literally, about three minutes outdoors.

As for the onsite visit itself, it was incredibly hectic, but also a lot of fun. We worked very long hours, usually getting to the site around 8 am and not leaving till 11 pm or midnight. But we did break away for lunch and dinner, which gave me a chance to get to know the two guys I was working with a little better. Just talking with them and working long hours with them gave me a good taste of what Fargo is all about. I was amazed at how much they loved it. They never even considered moving somewhere else -- they thought Fargo was the greatest place on earth! And yes, they really do talk like the people in the movie, you betcha!

Finally, on the third day, we got all the problems sorted out. The customer was thrilled, and as much as I had enjoyed my time in Fargo, I was happy to be going home so I could get some sleep. I headed off to the airport. AA doesn't go to Fargo, so I was flying on Northwest, where I have zero status. In fact, I had just joined WorldPerks at the check-in kiosk for my outbound flight. To my surprise, when I checked in for my return flight, the check-in kiosk spit out two boarding passes (I was connecting through Minneapolis) with FIRST printed on them. I was confused. I was certain I had purchased coach tickets. That FIRST couldn't mean first class, right?

As I sat at the gate pondering this, two of the customers walked up to me. They were big manager-types from a different branch, and they were in town for some meetings with their colleagues in Fargo; I had met them while I was onsite earlier. When we went to board the flight, it turned out that I was indeed in first class. (I still don't know why. The only thing I can think of is that I was flying on a full Y ticket, and maybe NW gives complimentary upgrades on those?) That made me rather uncomfortable, because the big managers were in coach! I tried to explain that I had no idea how I ended up in first class, and I certainly hadn't paid for it, but they just laughed and said I did a great job fixing their problems, so I deserved it. I didn't complain after that. It certainly made the ride home a little more comfortable.

Oh yeah, one more thing. Back in Dallas, my boyfriend had been walking past our manager's office on my first day in Fargo, when she asked him to come in for a minute. All she said was, "I do have caller ID." In other words, she knew I had called her from his apartment, and she had figured out that we were dating. They both laughed about it. You might remember from my last entry that my manager is married to another employee at our company, so she was totally cool about everything. She was the first person on our team to find out. Over the next month or so, we told a couple more of our closer friends, but some of our teammates didn't find out until just a few months ago, when we were making plans to move out to California together. (That made it kinda obvious.)

Anyway, that was one of my first business trips, but it remains one of my favorites. Still, I'm not looking for any trips back to Fargo this February. It's just too darn cold.

No, please keep up writing! I - and I'm sure also the other FT's - liked it a lot! ^ I really like your style of writing

Love the stories - keep 'em coming!

Greg

I just saw this thread for the first time today, but I like it a lot! I'm looking forward to the next installment.

Ditto on both points.

It's not every trip that starts out with getting hit by a car.

On Friday morning, I unloaded my bags from the parking shuttle at SJC, running late (as usual) for my flight to LAX. I had turned away from the shuttle and started walking towards the terminal when I felt some resistance on my rollaboard. I looked up and saw a car backing up, right into my bag! Fortunately, my Travelpro took the hit much better than my knee would have. Still, not a good start to a trip.

I breezed through security, managing to avoid the way-too-chatty TSA agent who always refuses to let me pass through the metal detectors until he's informed me, quite slowly, that, "You need to get your laptop out... and put it in a bin by itself. We suggest removing your shoes... or you may be subjected to... secondary screening. Please remove... any coats... or sweatshirts." After grabbing some breakfast, I settled into my seat on the one-seat side of the regional jet. Soon afterwards, a young man and woman wandered onto the plane and sat in the seats on the two-seat side directly across the aisle from me. The woman, dressed entirely in pink right down to her pink flip-flops with rhinestones, kept exclaiming, "This is such a TINY plane! I mean, it's TINY!" Her male companion reassured her by saying, "Well, there is one good thing about smaller planes. The terrorists never use them!" I drifted off to sleep listening to the woman complain, "But the plane is just so TINY! We're going to feel EVERY bump!"

An hour later, I woke up as we were on our final approach into LAX. I love LAX, because there are so many interesting planes there. LAX is not dominated by any particular airline, and it is used for everything from 30-min turbo prop hops to "flagship" transcons to long-haul international voyages, so the mix of planes is unbelievable. On this particular morning, I spotted a funky-looking Qantas plane that I later found out was John Travolta's personal 707 (see http://www.visitingphx.com/vac2n.html). I also enjoyed watching a Air New Zealand 747 touch down. The enormous jet seemed to move in slow motion and almost hang in the air as it approached the runway, especially compared to the zippy MD-80s and regional jets that nipped at its wheels, barely reaching its wings. 747s fascinate me, and LAX is pretty much the only place where I get a chance to see them. One day, I hope to ride in the upper level!

As on my previous trip to LAX, we parked next to a plane with special paint indicating that it was AA's 100th regional jet. This gave me another opportunity to ponder whether having 100 regional jets is something to celebrate (or advertise, for that matter).

As I departed my plane, I noticed that I was, once again, on an Eagle flight with an "Outstanding Employee" plaque. This was my eighth Eagle segment this year (yuck), and I think that at least half of them have had a little plaque at the front stating that so-and-so is an Outstanding Employee. At first, I felt very special to be in the hands of an Outstanding Employee. Then, I started to realize that Eagle apparently has a lot of Outstanding Employees, which implies that the standards for being Outstanding aren't all that high. Then, I noticed that most of the time, the flight attendant for my flight does not have the same name as the Outstanding Employee listed on the plaque. Perhaps pilots can get recognized as well? Or perhaps each Outstanding Employee simply gets a plaque on some plane, so the plaque has nothing to do with whether the Employees on my particular flight are Outstanding? I haven't quite figured out what the deal is with that, but it does keep me amused during those regional jet flights.

Anyway, I headed up to Pasadena and checked into the Westin for a few hours of relaxation before heading over to the customer site. This was a follow-up visit to the January trip that I wrote about in my first entry here. In January, we were planning a migration to a new version of one of our products; this time, we were actually performing the migration. So we got started at around 7 pm and worked through till the wee hours of the morning. Fortunately, the whole thing went fairly smoothly. I was prepared to have to work all weekend long, but instead, when we left at around 3 AM on Saturday morning, it was, "OK, see you on Monday!"

This was great, because my fiance was coming down to visit me for the weekend. He had gotten a NetSAAver fare from SFO-LAX -- my Valentine's Day present! I was excited for him to come, and thrilled that I wouldn't have to go into work at all while he was there. I had to wake up at about 6:30 AM on Saturday to pick him up, which was real tough after that late night, but totally worth it! On Saturday night, we went out to one of his favorite restaurants, a place called Gladstone's. (He used to live in LA, and he was also a consultant out here for quite a while, so he knows the area better than I do.) It is a seafood restaurant that is right on the beach in Malibu. We timed dinner perfectly (around 5:30 pm), because the sun was setting over the Pacific Ocean as we were seated. Absolutely beautiful. On Sunday night, we chose to explore Pasadena instead. We found a good sushi restaurant (Kabuki's) and finished it off with some Ghiradelli's sundaes. If you have a serious sweet tooth (like me), you need to find a Ghiradelli's store. They make a mean chocolate chip cookie sundae, with warm cookies and super-rich Ghiradelli's chocolate syrup. Absolute heaven.

Sadly, my fiance had to leave early Monday morning to get back to work, so I dropped him off at LAX and headed in to the customer's office. I knew Monday would either be a really easy day or a really rough day, depending on whether the migration really did go as smoothly as it seemed on Friday night, or whether users started reporting tons of problems when they got into the office on Monday. By mid-morning, it was clear that it would be an easy day; zero problems had been reported, leaving me happily bored. We had a status meeting, and I was hoping they'd tell me I could go home that afternoon -- I could be back in the Bay Area in time for Valentine's dinner! Instead, the manager overseeing the project asked me to sit down with some of his developers on Tuesday, to discuss some of the features of the new product. There was no compelling reason why the meeting couldn't be scheduled for Monday afternoon instead, but the manager wanted to do it on Tuesday. Consequently, my V-day dinner would have to be spent on the road .

As if I wasn't bummed enough by that, during the meeting, one of the higher-up managers discussed treating us all to lunch or dinner, to celebrate the successful migration. Everyone insisted on lunch, because they wanted to spend the evening with their spouses. As the only non-local person in the room, I just bit my tongue.

I got back to my hotel that afternoon in a foul mood. Normally, travel doesn't bug me that much, but this day hit me hard. I just wanted to go home. Since I couldn't do that, I decided to hit the gym instead. After a good swim/bike, I headed back to my room feeling a little better, resigned to room service for dinner -- I hate dining alone as it is, and I definitely couldn't handle it when surrounded by a bunch of lovey-dovey couples.

When I entered the room, my jaw almost hit the floor. Sitting on the desk was a vase full of beautiful roses. My fiance had said a few days earlier that he was sorry he could only fly down for the weekend as a Valentine's gift, that he hadn't done flowers or anything. Since the weekend trip was plenty enough for me, and he is terrible at keeping secrets, I had no reason to think that anything else might be coming. But he somehow managed to completely surprise me, and it totally turned around my day. I still felt pathetic spending my Valentine's night eating room service and watching "Trading Spouses: Meet Your New Mommy" (for the first and last time, honest!), but at least I had some nice roses to brighten up my "dinner table."

I had hoped to take care of my remaining meetings on Tuesday morning, then leave before lunch. No such luck. The meetings got scheduled for the afternoon, so I hung around just waiting in the morning. I finally left Pasadena late afternoon, and headed off to LAX for my flight home.

The flights that I usually see occupying the LAX Eagle terminal are headed for airports like San Jose, Monterey (California), Palm Springs, and San Diego. Much to my surprise, on this particular night, the flight at the gate next to mine was headed for NW Arkansas, of all places; it was delayed 2 hours, which explains why I normally don't see it. Since there was nothing better to do while I waited for my flight to board, I made a mental list of the upsides and downsides of being a passenger on that flight. Here is what I came up with:

Downsides
----------------
1. You are going to Arkansas.
2. You are flying there from California -- on a regional jet. (It is 1235 miles from LAX-DFW, so the trip to NW Arkansas must be 1300 miles or more.)
3. Your flight running is two hours late.
4. This means you will waste two additional hours of your life in the LAX Eagle terminal. Think about it. Those are two hours you will never get back.

Upsides
-----------------
1. The LAX Eagle terminal is perhaps the only place on earth that makes Arkansas look downright exciting.

As I finished up my list, the gate agent announced that there was yet another downside:
5. After waiting for two hours, your flight has been cancelled.

Now I really felt bad for those passengers. They would probably have to route through DFW, and would not arrive at their destination until sometime tomorrow. On the bright side, at least they wouldn't be on a regional jet for 1300 miles. Almost instantly after that announcement, a line formed for rebookings, stretching nearly halfway down the Eagle terminal. I was amazed that that many people wanted to go to Arkansas on a regional jet in the first place, nevermind the fact that they were not dissuaded from going by the flight being cancelled. Personally, I think I would've said, "You know what? I really didn't want to go that much in the first place."

The semi-chaos created by the cancellation delayed boarding of my flight slightly, but eventually we got on (walking past yet another Outstanding Employee plaque) and pushed away. As we took off, we passed over the coolest thing ever: A 747 parking lot! There were about six or seven 747s parked there, along with a few other planes, each at what appeared to be their own personal satellite terminal. I was slightly confused, until I remembered that I had actually been to this "parking lot" before. It all came back to me, boarding a bus at LAX's TBIT (international terminal) that would transport me to a 747, sitting somewhere on a remote tarmac, preparing for the 14-hour flight to Sydney. It was August 2000. I had a volunteer position working at the Olympic Games, and although I was in college at the time, I somehow managed to convince my professors that it was OK for me to miss the first month of classes to go. Due to a very early flight from the East Coast, I had been up for nearly 24 hours straight when I got on that bus, but I was bouncing with excitement. I was going to Australia! For the Olympics! A few minutes later, we arrived at the 747 that would take me to one of the best experiences of my life...

Warmed by that memory, I smiled as we headed out over the Pacific Ocean, into the sunset.

Must have missed this report. I am now caught up.
You had me laughing about the top 5 for going to Arkansas.

I like this post...reminds me of my consulting days. Keep up the good work.

My trip home from Pasadena was short-lived. I got home at around 8 pm, and by 8 am the next morning, I was on the road again, headed for Colorado Springs via Seattle and Denver, on Alaska Airlines.

I love flying into/out of Seattle, because the views of the mountains are usually stunning, and this trip was no exception. At one point, we had an amazing view of Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Adams, and Mt. Rainier; we flew so close to Mt. St. Helens that I could actually see the smoke coming out of the top. It is really cool seeing Mt. St. Helens next to the other two. They're like triplets, except Mt. St. Helens is missing its entire top, due to the eruption in the early 1980s. When you see the other two, you know what Mt. St. Helens once looked like, and you realize what a big chunk of rock got blown off in that eruption. I'm glad I wasn't in the area when that stuff (not to mention enough liquid hot magma to satisfy even Dr. Evil) hit the ground.

I made it to Seattle and had enough of a layover to be able to grab some lunch before continuing on to Denver. My flight into Denver was on time -- I only mention that because that appears to be fairly unusual for Alaska, as this was the only one of my four flights that was. I picked up my car and drove the hour or so down to Colorado Springs.

I'd been to Colorado Springs before, to work with this same customer, back in October. The circumstances were very different. At that time, the customer was experiencing a severe problem with one of our products. I ended up spending 4 days in Colorado Springs, from midday Friday to midday Tuesday; during that time, I spent over 70 hours actually onsite with the customer, working through the problems. The 14-hour days were considered the "short" ones; one day(/night), I worked for 20 hours straight. It was the most intensive trip I've ever had. This time around, the customer simply wanted us to review their application, to make sure they had taken appropriate steps to prevent serious problems like that from ever happening again.

I was happy to see that the customer had made a lot of improvements to their app. Indeed, the entire system had been rock-solid since we worked through the problems in October. As a result, this trip was much more relaxed. (Not that it's hard to improve upon 14-hr days.) In fact, I was able to get the required meetings out of the way by mid-afternoon on Thursday, which gave me some time to do some sightseeing -- a rarity when I'm traveling on business. At the customer's recommendation, I went to see the Garden of the Gods, and I was awestruck. It consists of large red rock formations, nestled at the base of Pikes Peak and the other Rocky Mountains. The views are amazing, and that day was a particularly good day to go, because it was a bright, sunny day, and the red rocks stood out beautifully against the deep blue sky. I kicked myself for not bringing my camera. I walked the one-mile loop around some of the bigger formations, then drove on the road that surrounds the site. The drive was incredible too, with great views across the entire Garden of the Gods and the Rockies. It is hard to put into words what this place is like. It reminded me a lot of Kata Tjuta (the Olgas -- also known as "the rocks you go to while you're waiting for sunset at Uluru/Ayers Rock") in Australia, with the added benefit of panoramic mountain views. If you ever find yourself in the Colorado Springs area, it's well worth a visit.

Anyway. It was a good thing that I got a little bit of relaxation time in on Thursday, because Friday turned out to be a stressful day. I planned to get up early, go for a quick run, and review the notes for the presentation I needed to give to the customer that morning. I had hit snooze two or three times when my phone rang at about 5:30 AM. It was one of my co-workers. My customer in Pasadena, who I had worked with earlier in the week (see my previous entry), was experiencing serious problems, possibly due to the migration we'd just completed. They were working with another support person, but they weren't real happy with him, so they were asking for me. I told them I couldn't help directly, because I had to work with my current customer, but I did spend an hour or so providing some assistance "behind the scenes" while the other support person continued to work with them directly. Finally, I snuck away for about 20 minutes to run on the treadmill (I've been seriously slacking on my triathlon training as of late), then showered and got ready for work.

My presentation and final wrap-up meeting only took about two hours, so I was headed off to Denver at around 11 AM. I was excited! I would be able to get home early! On my drive up, I dialed into the conference call for my Pasadena customer. Another one of my colleagues was leading the call, but I wanted to stay involved, in case I got pulled in later.

I was slightly bummed when I got to Denver at around noon and discovered that the next flight to Seattle did not leave until 3:15 pm. I grabbed some lunch and stayed on the conference call, then headed to my gate at around 2 pm. The conference call wrapped up shortly before boarding started for the 3:15 pm flight. I checked in to see if I could fly standby. The gate agent told me that I should be able to get on the flight to Seattle, but all the earlier flights from Seattle to Oakland were sold out. But I figured it couldn't hurt to get to Seattle and then take my chances there.

As expected, I had no trouble getting on the flight out of Denver; I was even assigned an aisle seat, with an empty middle next to it. I arrived in Seattle and proceeded to the gate for the next flight to Oakland, scheduled to leave at around 6:15 but running about 10 mins late (per usual for Alaska). I waited till the flight departed, but I was not able to get off the standby list. This really sucked, because the next flight to Oakland was delayed over an hour, and the last flight (my confirmed flight) was delayed nearly two hours, till 10:30 pm. I settled in for a long evening.

Of all the days I could've picked for an extended stay at Sea-Tac, this was probably the worst. The terminal was an absolute zoo. It was the Friday before Presidents Day, so there were lots of families with kids, and a number of large, loud sports teams. For perhaps the first time ever, I genuinely wished that I had some sort of airline club membership, to get away from the chaos.

After getting some work done and spending half an hour in line to get a bagel sandwich, I returned to the gate, hoping to get on the second flight to Oakland. Things were not looking good. First of all, the flight had been delayed further; originally scheduled to leave at 7:15 pm, it was now showing a departuer time of 8:55 pm. Furthermore, as I waited in line, a new message popped up on the flight information screen at the podium: "Are you interested in a free ticket?" I'd seen this all over Sea-Tac on this particular day; I realized it is Alaska-speak for "We're oversold and looking for volunteers."

I overheard the gate agent explain to a man why he did not have a seat assignment -- they still needed eight volunteers. The man seemed upset, but as the gate agent told him, "Hey, I'm not the one who oversold the flight. I'm just the one who has to deal with it." When it was my turn, I stepped up and said, "Oversold by 8, so I'm guessing my standby chances are not good?" and the gate agent agreed. So I gave her a smile and said, "Good luck with it." It can never hurt to get good karma on your side.

I hung around getting some more work done until the second flight started to board. I almost decided not to bother with it, and to just proceed to the gate for my booked flight, but by that time, my booked flight had been pushed even later, and the prospect of being able to get home about an hour and a half earlier was just too appealing. So I went to hang out at the podium. I figured that at the very least, I'd get to see some Airline-style fireworks when someone got denied boarding.

Sure enough, there was drama going on. They had gotten down to only needing two volunteers, but no one was stepping forward. Currently, they were looking to deny boarding to the man I'd seen earlier, along with a young woman. Both were understandably upset. It turned out that the man was actually traveling with a larger group; there were about five or six people standing with him at the podium. The agent at the podium explained to him that the rest of his group needed to board right away, as they were in final boarding; to punctuate that point, the agent at the gate (scanning boarding passes) announced the names of all those passengers and urged them to board right away. But the group wasn't moving. English was clearly not their first language (I think they were Japanese tourists), so I don't know if they simply didn't understand what the agent was saying, or what. But finally the agent said, "OK fine, I'm going to give one of your seats to the young woman here." The woman took her boarding pass and practically sprinted to the door.

The large group still was not moving, and the agent at the podium warned them again that they needed to make a decision: Either all but two of them could proceed to Oakland, or she could give away all their seats without any compensation. By this time, it was about 9:20 -- nearly half an hour past the stated departure time, which was already nearly two hours past the original departure time -- and all the agents clearly wanted to get this flight pushed back. Finally, the man who was being denied boarding (who was obviously the leader of the group) said, "OK, we'll board." Suddenly, the group of about five or six people standing at the podium became, literally, 20-30 people moving towards the gate. I guess I hadn't noticed that some of the other folks milling about were part of that group as well.

As they got in line, the agent at the podium said, "Oops." Apparently, in giving the extra seat to the young woman, she had accidentally deleted all of the group's reservations or something. She started typing frantically, and after a minute or two, the agent at the gate came over and said, "None of their boarding passes are scanning." The agent at the podium said, "Yeah, I know, I'm trying to fix it." As she was typing, the group leader was still giving her grief. He still had not accepted the fact that two of them needed to stay in Seattle. "We all go! We all fly! We all go to Oakland!" he kept saying, and the podium agent said, "No, two of you need to stay." "You said only one of us needed to stay!" "Yes, but then you didn't board, and I gave one of your seats to that other woman. Now, do you all want to stay, or do all but two of you want to go?" Now, I still don't know if the group leader fully understood what she was saying, but I definitely know how he responded: "No. We no go."

"Fine," the podium agent said. Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! She called about five names off the standby list! The first few weren't there, but finally she got to my name and handed me a boarding pass. Meanwhile, a supervisor showed up, and the group leader started yelling at the guy. But I didn't care. I was heading home, with my most drama-filled boarding pass ever.

They ended up clearing a few more folks off the standby list after me, but the flight still took off with a bunch of empty seats. I felt bad for the big group (especially when I realized that not only were they stuck in Seattle with zero compensation, but their luggage was most likely on its way to Oakland), but if you're a group leader, responsible for taking a bunch of non-English speakers to the USA, you have to be able to handle situations like that, including having a firm grasp of both the airline's rules and the English language, so you can understand what is going on and make decisions appropriately.

My new flight ended up getting to Oakland only about half an hour before my original flight. But at least I had an interesting story to tell about my delay.

Definitely keep writing... I'm quite enjoying this!

Your type of travel reminds me of the kind I do and you capture the spirit of being a young female on the road quite well.

Cheers!

After my adventures in Seattle, I arrived in Oakland at about 11:45 pm, spent a few minutes wandering around the daily parking lot trying to remember where I parked my car, and finally got home and tumbled into bed at around 1 am. My trip home did not last for long; within 7 hours, I was back on a plane -- this time, with my fiance.

We were headed back to Texas to look for wedding locations. Even though we live in California now, about 90% of our wedding guests will be coming from Texas, including most of our mutual friends, so it made a lot of sense to do the wedding back there. Besides, it feels like "home" to both of us. We spent Sunday and Monday traipsing all over Texas (well, technically only Dallas and Austin, but it FELT like all of Texas), and finally decided that the places we liked the best were the two places that we saw last, almost as afterthoughts, on Monday evening. Go figure.

We flew back to California early on Tuesday morning, where I had almost a full week at home to look forward to. Of course, my fiance had to go back to Dallas (of all places) for a business trip that week. He is down to about one trip a month, and wouldn't you know that it fell during one of the few weeks where I didn't have a trip. It was OK though, because I had a lot of stuff to take care of at home. We had moved from our temporary corporate housing into our permanent home at the beginning of February; my fiance had done most of the unpacking, but he had left the office to me, since that is my "space" when I'm working from home. Of course, I'd had barely two days at home to work on unpacking the office since our move! That's one of the hard parts about balancing traveling with home; I am home just enough so I can't neglect it, but not enough to give it the attention it needs.

My main motivation for getting the apartment in some sort of order was that my parents were coming into town that Friday for a visit. They live on the East Coast, and my mom is even more of a road warrior than I am, so I only get to see them a few times a year. It was wonderful having them around. I got to go wedding dress shopping with my mom (a real treat for both of us), and we spent much of Saturday doing the tourist thang in San Francisco. Sunday morning came all too soon; my fiance drove them to SJC for their return trip home, while I headed off to SFO, missing home even more than usual.

My destination for this week was the happenin' little town of Bloomington, Illinois, via ORD. As I boarded my SFO-ORD flight, I saw an elderly woman boarding behind me; she was also in first class. I was about to offer to put her rollaboard into the overhead bin when she politely asked the flight attendant, "Could you put this bag up for me?" The flight attendant looked none too pleased, and said, "Is it heavy?" After testing it out, he deemed it light enough to lift into the overhead bin, and he put it in. He then lectured the woman on finding a rollaboard small enough to fit under the seat in front of her. Now, I'm a big fan of people being able to lift their own carry-ons, but this seemed a bit rude, especially in first class.

The powerports weren't working on the nearly 4-hour flight to ORD. This was, of course, my fault, as I had just been bragging to my parents about how AA has powerports on just about every flight. (My mom has been PM at Delta practically since they invented the level; my dad used to be Delta SM, but has recently switched over to US Airways.) I had planned to get a good deal of work done during the flight. Instead, my laptop battery died with about an hour to go, and I had to watch the guy across the aisle from me happily use his powerport (they were working on the left-hand side of the plane, for some reason) to play Solitaire. Consequently, I arrived at ORD in a bad mood. I grabbed some dinner and headed to my Eagle gate for the short hop to BMI.

I knew that there was a good chance of a bump on this flight; when I'd first reserved the flight (a full Y fare), I wasn't able to get a seat assignment, and although I was able to pick one up a few days later, the flight was still showing as completely full. Plus, it was raining in ORD, and a lot of the earlier flights were looking for volunteers due to weight restrictions. Sure enough, my flight was overweight too, and they asked for volunteers shortly before boarding. I couldn't resist. I got a $250 voucher, as well as a bus ticket, since the first flight out the next morning didn't arrive in BMI until nearly 10 AM.

The bus ticket turned out to be an adventure, since the AA folks couldn't tell me where the bus would drop me off or really anything about the bus trip in general. When I boarded the bus, I discovered that it was a regularly-scheduled bus between ORD and the Bloomington/Peoria area. It was supposed to only drop off at two of the universities in Bloomington, but I asked the bus driver if he could take me to my hotel instead. I knew it was a long shot, so I was prepared to take a cab. I fell asleep shortly after we left ORD, and when I woke up, the bus driver was calling out, "Hampton Inn!" Sure enough, he had dropped me off right at the front door of my hotel. Still groggy with sleep, I thanked the driver, checked in, and stumbled into bed.

My assignment in Bloomington was fairly easy: I was teaching a workshop that I wrote myself about a year ago, and have delivered multiple times since then, so I know the material backwards and forwards. It was a good thing that this trip wasn't too taxing, as I came down with a mild stomach bug on Monday night. This is my worst nightmare when I'm on the road. When I'm traveling, I can't just call in sick; I'm only in town for a few days, and the customer has set aside time to work with me while I'm there. I can't call in a replacement, since I'm there alone, far away from all of my colleagues. Unless I am, literally, in the hospital, I just have to suck it up -- which is what I did. I was a bit concerned that I might have to take an emergency bathroom break in the middle of a lesson, but fortunately, I made it through Tuesday with no problems.

As I drove home on Tuesday afternoon, I discovered that my Hampton Inn had suddenly become a Baymont Inn. Nice. Like I don't have enough trouble remembering which hotel I'm in this week, they have to go and change the name on me in the middle of the trip.

I was still feeling a bit iffy on Wednesday, but luckily, it was a short day, allowing us to wrap up around lunchtime. Rather than catch an earlier flight back home, I decided to hit the gym. The Hampton Inn, ummm, I mean the Baymont Inn has a deal with the local YWCA to let its guests work out there, and since the YWCA is on the way to the airport anyway, it was easy to drop by on my way over. I arrived at about noon, and my flight was not till 5:50, so I had practically unlimited time to work out, with no need to rush. This is a rare luxury for me, because I'm usually trying to cram workouts in between the million other things going on in my life.

After a good swim and run, I continued on to the airport. The airport employees must have been thrilled to see me, because in the middle of the afternoon, there are few flights arriving or departing. The three(!) Avis employees took the time to straighten out an issue with my credit card, and the TSA even gave my laptop some extra attention (lucky me). I proceeded on to the "coffee shop," which is probably the only honor-system coffee shop in an American airport. It consists of a bunch of canisters of coffee, along with a box and a sign pleading you to pay $1 for coffee, 50 cents for refills. It is really cute . The Bloomington airport is also one of the few airports I've been in that offers free wireless Internet access, so all in all, it was a pleasant place to pass a few hours.

I continued on to ORD and, finally to SFO. I had a real treat waiting for me at SFO: My best friend from college had flown in from Boston for a visit. We spent Thursday wandering around San Francisco, then drove up to Reno to visit one of our other best friends from college, who is attending grad school at the University of Nevada-Reno. She also works part-time at Mount Rose, a ski resort that is just outside of Reno, so we went skiing on Saturday! I hadn't been on skis since high school, so it took me a while to get the hang of it again, but we all had a blast. Mount Rose has a great variety of terrain, even for beginners like me, and it was not too crowded either, especially considering it was a beautiful Saturday afternoon. We worked up quite an appetite, so we hit the Victorian Buffet at the Silver Legacy casino that evening and practically rolled ourselves home.

We spent Sunday relaxing and going to the mall, since I had discovered that I had completely forgotten to pack any bras, aside from the sports bra I wore skiing. My friends all laughed at me, the "experienced" traveler, who has forgotten just about everything (hairbrush, training manuals, laptop power adapter, even underwear...) at one point or another. We found a Victoria's Secret at the mall, so I bought some new bras to get me through the next few days, since I was headed off to Seattle for yet another business trip.

After saying goodbye to my friends at the Reno airport, I checked in for my flight and discovered that it was half an hour late and oversold. Par for the course, for Alaska Airlines. Adding to the chaos, the inbound flight had had an equipment change (MD80 to 737), so the gate agents had to scramble to reassign seats for people at the last minute. I was originally seatless, but managed to snag an exit-row seat without too much trouble, much to my relief. I arrived in Seattle and was pleased to discover that Avis had given me a Grand Prix, one of my new favorite cars. I sped off to my hotel, a very nice Hampton Inn right near the Space Needle, and headed to bed.

My assignment for this week was to deliver another workshop, one which I also know pretty well. I had to swing by Kinko's to pick up the workshop manuals on Monday morning before class. I was pulling out of the parking space in my hotel in a hurry, running a bit late, when I heard an awful scraping sound. I looked up to see that I was now missing a left side-view mirror. I opened the door, found the mirror still intact, and tried desperately to reattach it, with no success. Oh well -- I continued on to Kinko's and then to the customer site, being very careful about any lane changes to the left.

The students in the workshop were on the IT staff of a local university, so I pulled into the university's main gate to get a parking pass. The attendant told me to park in a nearby lot, then showed me a map of the building I needed to go to. It was probably half a mile away. Normally, I wouldn't mind the exercise, but with a bunch of heavy manuals, I wasn't looking forward to it. I finally made it to my destination, hair a mess (a trip to Seattle is always one long bad hair day), pouring sweat. I was just around the corner of the classroom when the bottom of the Kinko's box gave out. Manuals spilled across the floor, like something out of one of those school movies, where the geeky kid drops all her books while the cool kids laugh. It was not even 9 AM, and it was not shaping up to be a good day.

The rest of the workshop was only marginally better. Sometimes, I have an onsite visit where I'm just rocking, and sometimes, I'm not. This was one of those "not" trips. But I survived, and the students enjoyed the class, for the most part. We wrapped up a little early on Tuesday, so I headed off to the airport, hoping to catch an earlier flight. I knew it would be tight -- but hey, Alaska is always late, right?

I pulled into the Avis lot, where the attendant asked me if everything was OK with the car. I just pointed nervously to the left mirror. They made me fill out an accident report, but so far, no extra charges. Whew!

I hit the terminal with about twenty minutes till the next flight to SJC. Of course, I had to hit the slowest TSA line on the planet. Even though I was in the elite line (significantly shorter than the regular line), it took about 10 minutes to get through. The woman even re-screened my carry-on bag, which usually only happens at places like BMI where they have nothing better to do. Finally, the TSA released me from its grasp, and I sprinted to the gate. When I arrived, the door was closed, and the gate agent said I'd missed it by about one minute -- even though it was still a good five minutes before departure time. It figures that when I'm on time for an Alaska flight, it is late, and when I'm late, it's right on time.

It wasn't too much of a problem, though. My original flight was only a little late, and I got back into SJC at a reasonable hour, looking forward to nearly five full days at home before my next trip.

As a regular reader of 1993gt40's thread, I can agree that you are in the same mould...just with a female twist (much more like prncess674). Taking off a side mirror though doesn't quite compare with the damage 1993gt40 did to his rental in LAS, but I'm sure you wouldn't have wanted to either...

You have a very easy reading style - to illustrate my point, I've just finished the bottle of wine I started tonight reading Seat 2A's Trip Report. Now, there's nothing I like better than a well written report and some quiet time.

You mentioned John Travolta's plane - I had the pleasure of having dinner with John and Kelly and toured his 707. If you want me to email the video clips (quality was a little difficult, as it's a chocolate brown interior) and photo's, let me know.

I'm looking forward to reading more of your reports and perhaps even witness a wedding TR?? I can help if you want some hints...read mine

Keep up the writing.. good way to pass some time during my "lame duck" last week on the job.

Just an FYI, but all Visa, American Express, and Diner's Club credit cards have some sort of car rental insurance if your company does not cover it.