Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Why I hate traveling...

Yesterday I left my happy home to fly thousands of miles to Nashville, TN, by way of ATL (Atlanta International Airport). I hate layovers, particularly when they overshoot my destination.  I really don't like layovers in ATL because so far I've been there 3 times and 2 out of those three have been crappy.  My first layover sucked because my first flight landed at ATL 30 minutes before my connection took off.  I was at terminal D.  My connection, of course, was at terminal A...on the other side of the complex.  I had to nearly run to make my flight.

My second layover in ATL sucked because I was there for 3 hours.  How's that for a layover?  Plenty of time to get to my connecting gate, unfortunately I had forgotten the cord to my laptop, which was nearly dead from meetings, so I couldn't work or play.  Instead I walked around the airport and got some food...for 3 hours.  Oh, this was also the return flight on the same trip as above.  Yeah, that trip sucked.

This time through ATL, it was fine, surprisingly. BNA (Nashville International Airport)...not so much.  I had a rental car reservation since I'm here for a few days (which in and of itself sucks as well) and the rental company, HERTZ, had NO cars.  I never heard why, just that it would require me waiting 30 - 60 minutes.  I waited over 90 before they gave me a crappy Nissan SUV, the Rogue.  It's one of those cars that's trying to be an SUV, and failing miserably.

So I got in my shoebox with a lift gate and no sooner had I left the airport then Sally the Hooker (our affectionate name for TeleNav GPS, Sprint's horrible, built-in GPS app) ignored the fact that I just typed in the address of my hotel and picked a random, past destination 500 miles away in Raleigh.  Fortunately, I figured this out fairly quickly but not before getting lost in the suburbs of Nashville, at night.  At one point I was so flustered that I turned left and headed the wrong way down a one way street.  It was at that point that I knew I should've taken a cab instead.

Getting to the meeting this morning was great.  I was supposed to follow some vendor contacts however they left before I could see where they went and GPS hadn't kicked in yet so I of course, a man who poses the innate navigational abilities of  a shovel, headed the wrong way.  GPS kicked in just in time to let me know that I, and my unfortunate co-worker\passenger, were screwed.

Aside from the fact that travleing takes me away from my wife, this is a good indication of why I hate it.

1 comment:

  1. Great story, babe....and an even better lead in for my future blog about ALL things that make you rage and the things that remain in your head, even though what comes out is entertaining enough. May I suggest that next time you have your co-worker rent the car and you be the passenger?

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