Showing posts with label atl. Show all posts
Showing posts with label atl. Show all posts

Saturday, April 5, 2008

Flight 007: Hotlanta

I had a short night of sleep before my meeting in downtown Atlanta. As you can see from the picture, there is still a lot of damage to be fixed from the tornado that ran through downtown Atlanta last week. All of those white spaces on the building are places where the windows broke from the pressure. I can't imagine how much glass was on the sidewalks in the aftermath, I'm glad it happened at night! After my meeting I headed straight back to Atlanta airport to hop another flight to Tulsa by way of Houston. Atlanta airport is huge -- I would definitely give yourself enough time to get through security, hop on the tram, and then walk the distance to your gate.

I had a little bit of a flight scare for the first time ever. As we began our descent into Houston, the panel next to me started vibrating like crazy. Everybody around me looked over, including the flight attendant who promptly headed toward the cockpit without saying a word. I gotta say that I was pretty zen about the whole thing though. I figured there was nothing I could do so I just tried to ignore it, haha. The guy next to me thought it might have been an engine thing because our row was aligned with the engine on the left wing but he asked the flight attendant as we left and he said it was an A/C pack issue, whatever that means. Anyway, I'm happy to say that I made it to Houston in one piece.

Monday, March 31, 2008

Flight 005: Flight Anxiety

I've got a killer week ahead of me: 4 cities in 4 days around the US. I swore I'd never do it again the last time I did it a month ago, but somehow I find myself with another itinerary full of nonstops and layovers, Marriotts and Hiltons, and growing quantities of laundry and sleeplessness. To say that I'm dreading it would be an understatement. People think that it's fun to visit new cities on business, but a visit to me consists of discovering such fun facts as whether the car rental is offsite or onsite, whether NeverLost is really going to keep me from getting lost, and if traffic congestion still allows me to make my departure flight in time. If I'm lucky, I'll get 1 dinner out on the town instead of grabbing room service and multi-tasking with work.

What I hate the most though, is that I'm already feeling anxious about all of this before I've even taken off on my first flight yet. There's got to be a way to compartmentalize work so that it doesn't affect the times when I'm not working and trying to relax. I can't imagine that I'm the only one though. Actually, I know I'm not because I've got enough stressed-out friends & coworkers who feel the same way. It seems like a sad statement about our lives and culture when we can't stop work from bleeding into everything else. Maybe Step 1 is cracking down on the Blackberry in off-work hours. Enough complaining though, it's time to do laundry and start packing!

This week I'll get to discover more fun airports: SNA - ATL - TUL - SAN. Happy Sunday.