Friday, January 30, 2009

HOME!!

Ahhh...i'm home...and soooooooooooo happy to be home.

First...clarification from my last post...i'm not going to be riding up at the LA Velodrome for another 2 weeks...so I have two weeks to freak myself out. Good times. And two weeks for anticipation of what it might be like.

I had to fly to TX for work on Sunday for the week...it was not a fun trip on many fronts

Flying out...

...things didn't start so well when I got to the airport and I asked the guy:

Um...i don't have a seat assignment.

He looked at me, looked at the flight and said: Yea, we are in an oversold status...oversold by ONE...and that is you. Best to check in at the gate and see if you can get on.

Here's the part that was lame about that...I had tried to get a seat assigment when I bought the ticket. I put in a request...there were seats...I BOUGHT THE SEAT 3 WEEKS AGO AND NOW YOU ARE TELLING ME I AM NOT ON THE FLIGHT?? Ok that is what I wanted to say to the guy...instead..i just sorta glared at him. I got on the flight in the end...of course a middle seat...but I got there.

The rental car...

I pick up my rental car and the radio isn't working and the radio says: Enter code....hmmm interesting. I mention this to the lady checking my car out and she offers to let me switch cars. I'm tired, cranky and want to get to my hotel so I decline. I also figure I can probably figure out how to punch in the code. So when I get to my hotel...i open the glove compartment, and lo and behold there is written: Radio Code 45934234 (whatever it was). I punch it in. The radio comes on. All is well.

I get out of my car, and double check there are no lights on (because i'm slightly paraonid with rentals) and go to bed. Come out the next morning...car won't start. Brilliant. I am supposed to be at where i'm doing my work stuff and i have a car that won't start. Call Hertz...they refer me to AAA...AAA comes out, jumps the car and then tells me that if the radio says: enter code...that's a BAD BAD THING...and CHANGE THE CAR. I tell Hertz...they then tell me to drive to the airport OR go and get it checked out. WHAT? I convince them that their job is to exchange the car...they eventually comply...but only with some minorly pointed arguments. NOT IMPRESSED.

Get to where I am going...and as time goes on we discover that what I am trying to do (i'm running experiments)...isn't really working very well. We are jerry-rigging the whole deal and I am not thrilled with the way it is turning out. I email my manager and tell him about the woes of the trip and say: the trip is going marginally.

He replies: Sounds like the trip from hell. I hope the rest of the week shapes up.

Experiments go south...
Um...unfortunately, things didn't shape up. Experimental points that were to take two days, were a bust in half a day so on Wed I end up having to re-design the stupid set of experiments...on the fly. I wasn't thrilled with it...I didn't feel like it was a great idea to just throw in the towel half way through Wed when I could at least attempt to do more experiments through Friday. Hopefully something unique and interesting will come from it.

Treadmill??
I got back to my hotel on Wed and was supposed to do some intervals on the treadmill...i really didn't want to so I sat in front of the TV for a bit and then headed down to the treadmill to do some attempt at this. Pushing buttons...treadmill won't work. Manager comes over to try to help me:

Oh yea, they were trying to fix this today. I thought it was fixed.

Me:( I just look at him...not sure what to say.)

Him: Well I can comp you a movie if you'd like?

Me:(Apparently i don't have any sort of a poker face. I must have given him some sad look of: But...I don't WANT a movie. Granted I really didn't even want to do this workout so I was secretly starting to be relieved.) Uh...that's ok.

Him: Well...i can comp you to go over to the gym across the street.

Me: (thinking: Crap now I have to do this workout)...uh sure.

Workout was done, and done quite well I might add. I was pretty pleased with it considering how tired I was and not really in the mood to be on a treadmill at that time.

The rest of the week...
The final bits of the week were pretty uneventful...THANK GOODNESS...It's really a bad thing when you want to go home on Monday and can't until Friday...but I got through it...and attempted to have as good an attitude about it as I could...but there always seemed to be just something round the corner waiting for me. But happy...HAPPY...HAPPY...to be home!

4 comments:

Kathleen @ ForgingAhead said...

I commuted to a job in DC for a while and had many similar weeks...those suck. Glad you made it through! Enjoy the weekend.

Bob Almighty said...

OOFA! I can almost imagine the scene when you got home..something along the lines of kissing the carpet like the pope... at least you got a good workout in not a total loss. Speaking of which how did the track workout go in LA?

Charisa said...

Oh my oh my - craziness! Glad you are home!!

Speed Racer said...

That sounds like a HORRIBLE trip. Of course I loved reading about it, just like you love watching a train wreck. I love the things that people try to do to make you happy. "We don't have apples, would you like a wall to hit your head against?" And why was your radio going to make your car explode.

Have fun freaking yourself out from the comforts of home about the velodrome. And remember, if you DO fall down and slide down the pitched curve, at least you'll be able to get off your bike when you finally hit bottom. Some of us may not be so lucky.

Also, my security word is "spreemis" which sounds to me like either a bodily fluid having to do with a genital infection, or a lemon-lime softdrink.