For the Children...

Today is Sunday. However, the "day" (a day is defined as the time from when I get up to the time I am allowed to lay down in a comfortable position and sleep) began yesterday at 3:15 in the morning.

I am in Geneva now as part of a four week "little" trip. Due to approval delays I was not able to book my tickets until it was really too late to get a "good" rate. This was complicated in that we budgeted for me to do all of this travel in January (translated: cheap rates) instead of June/July (translated: Holy-Cow-You-Can-Not-Be-Serious rates).

As the project manager, I am accountable to hitting our budget. So after berating a few of the team members, when I went to book my tickets the only way that I could hit the budget was for me to fly a slightly less than direct route from Lexington to Geneva. Best case, you can make this trip in 12-13 hours with one connection. I am not completely sure without doing the research, but I am pretty sure that the worst case is making it a 25 hour trip with 4 connections (Lexington to Atlanta to Boston to Paris to Geneva).

My first flight was at 6 a.m. Saturday morning. From reading earlier posts, you might have seen mention of my issues with sleeping on the planes. To remedy this, I was going to stay up late on Saturday to see if exhaustion drives sleep. (Turns out exhaustion + Cold medicine + boring movie options = enough snoring to miss two breakfasts).

I start this wonderful travel experience by staying up late (translate: procrastinating on packing until 10:00p.m. the night before) and a plan of getting up at 3:30 in the morning to get to the airport (relaxing my 2 hour rule) at 4:30. However, as the nervous guy, I set up a three-tiered alarm system.
- Alarm 1: Normal alarm clock set for 3:30 a.m.
- Alarm 2: Cell phone alarm clock set for 3:45 a.m.
- Alarm 3: I drank a lot of tea right before bed.

I went to bed at 12:15 and alarm 3 went off at about 1:30. I tried hitting snooze on that one, but it kept trying to go off until I finally gave up and got up at 3:15 and went for a Guiness record for length of pee. After showering to rehydrate (the California raisin look went out in the 80's) we left and made it to the airport at 4:29. For future reference, airport check-in lines do not open until about 4:36 which had not been communicated to the other 30-40 people standing in line.

The "cool" thing was that I have now traveled enough to skip the normal line and was first in line for the frequent traveler/first class line. So, this early on a Saturday morning, I could feel the love all around me. Most of the travelers were headed through Atlanta on their way to vacations like Disney World, so there were a few little kids with questions like "Mommy, why did that man get to go before us?..."

Unbeknownst (wow, I never get to use that word) to any of us, there was a bit of weather brewing in Atlanta which required one person to "deplane" so that their weight could be offset by additional fuel for circling Atlanta. (Isn't deplane a silly word like you have a plane growing like a mole on your back and you need to be "deplaned"). The flight attendant begged from the lobby. No takers -- apparently the other travelers wanted their vacations. The flight attendant begged from the plane and started offering $200 flight vouchers. I snoozed. The flight attendant begged and begged and mothers started looking nervous when it was mentioned that someone would be drawn "randomly".

The flight attendant offered $400 -- so I took it -- for the children.

Interestingly (is that a word?) the guy that started out as the jerk, was later applauded by the whole plane.

I really can't say much else. My bags went to Atlanta and then Boston. I went to Cincinnati, but with a 7.5 hour layover in Boston, they had plenty of time to drive themselves, stopping to see the museums, and meet me there. We then happily met each other in Geneva.

I actually slept most of the rest of the trip.