Remarkably Bad Travel Karma

I’m wrapping one remarkably bad work trip right now, sitting at CLT and waiting for my delayed flight to leave here at 12:30 AM. My coworker is still pounding away on a report at midnight. But as for my brain state, at this point, I can see the city limits for “Uselessville” fading away in the rear view mirror. Thus I’m just blogging now.

First of all, this was a “hurry up and wait” trip—we didn’t know whether the client was going to come through with a signed agreement when we left the office on Friday evening. I found out via email from my coworker on Saturday—“We’re a go. Pack your bags.”

We were headed to look at some leaky buildings on the Florida panhandle. Incidentally, did you know that part of Florida is not on Eastern Time? That surprised me too, when I landed and unexpectedly found myself a different time zone.

Various and sundry delays happened during travel—we were on the ground by 11:30 PM. However, we had a 1.5 hour drive, and then Google Maps completely misdirected us to our hotel. We followed the map, and ended up in the parking lot of a closed Irish Pub. Almost like useful. After a few calls to the hotel, we ended up driving another half hour in circles to find the place.

Then, pulling into the parking lot at 2:30 AM, we saw (a) scads of teenagers lounging around on the hotel balconies, (b) a sheriff’s car pulling away from a complaint from management, and (c) piles of red plastic cups and Bud Light suitcases crushed on the pavement. Oh yeah… it’s spring break. Great. In case you were wondering, we did not experience any “Girls Gone Wild” events heading to our hotel rooms… not that I really would’ve given a crap at that hour. (“Yay. Boobies. Whatever.”)

We ended up getting 3 hours’ of sleep before a 7 AM wheels-up time.

The work itself went well; generally, one of those Good Days at Work. Although exhausting. And nope, we didn’t get to see the beach at all, except from the rooftop.



As a funny coincidence, one of our other coworkers was traveling that day, and connecting in CLT at the same time. So we got together for a celebratory round of margaritas for surviving this trip. I had to bail early to catch my flight, leaving my second drink on the table.

After getting to the gate, we found out: yes, we were dealing with a delay: 10:30 -> 11:15 -> 12:30. I texted that news to my coworker, and he wrote back:

Damn. It was tough to get those drinks down, but hey, apparently I am the clean up guy

Man… you know that it’s bad when your delayed evening flight is listed along with tomorrow morning’s 6 AM flights.


I realized that the later in my sleep-deprived state I got, the more I sounded like a Tourette's patient ("God fucking shit delay to after cockbite midnight damn...").

Ugh. I ended up getting home at 3:30 AM. I’m spending today catching up on sleep debt, actually.