I had the occasion to make a business trip yesterday at the last minute. I don’t mind so much and, in fact, kinda like traveling. Becky, on the otherhand, is less comfortable with last minute changes so wasn’t overly enthusiastic. Oh, wait, did I mention changes? Well, you see, I was travelling with my manager and we had the same outgoing flight from San Diego at 7:14 AM. Unfortunately, it was cancelled along with another from the same airline headed to Chicago. Needless to say, there were quite a few people trying to find alternatives and after almost two hours of standing in line, I was able to get a seat on a later flight. My boss wasn’t as lucky and ended up buying a ticket on another airline to Oakland (I was flying into SFO).

The meeting happened and my boss and I were only about 60 and 30 minutes late, respectively.

That afternoon, we headed back to the airport to take the original return flight home only to find that the 6:32 PM flight was now leaving at 9:00. We tried briefly to get switched to an 8:00 flight, but didn’t want to stand in any more lines for only a one hour gain.

We boarded at 8:30 in advance of the pilots who arrived just before 9:00 (they were coming in from another airport). The plane took off about 9:30, landed at 11:00 and then I had to drive home.

From home back to home was 19 hours. All for a four hour meeting. Ugh.