2008-08-27

My Bidness Trip, Part One

It's my last night in Nashville. My esteemed colleagues are all out at the Wild Horse Saloon, engaging in more scheduled socializing/linedancing. I am in my hotel room, eating a delicious MoonPie and listening to Vic Chesnutt. Who's having the better time? Hard to say.

Where to start? I guess back at the beginning...back on Monday morning, when the world was fresh and new and I hadn't consumed my weight in the aforementioned MoonPies (to say nothing of the two boxes of Goo Goo Clusters in my bag, ready to bring home to them ig'nant Yankees, if I don't eat THOSE before the end of tonight).

Yes, Monday morning. I was packed, I was ready. I had the now-infamous folder (which, if you're just tuning in, has become a totem of sorts, emblematic of all that is truly wrong and sick about me, at least where traveling is concerned):

And of course, as all longtime chickens know, I cannot go ANYWHERE without Mousie, my best friend since I was three:

Poor, long-suffering Mousie has seen the inside of many a hotel room since 1973, when my daddy brought him back from a business trip in Chicago. And now Mousie accompanies ME on business trips. What a world.

I sort of had an inkling that despite all my plans and printouts, I was not going to be in for a smooth journey when my Charlie Card failed to trigger the fare gate at Green Street Station. This NEVER happens. I had to flag down what had to be the SLOWEST MBTA EMPLOYEE IN ALL OF GREATER BOSTON, who ambled over to where I was standing, shrugged, and mumbled something about my needing to "stanovahtheyahbythatgate" while he made a show of opening up the reader and poking at a few wires. Failing to find anything interesting, he then ambled over to the big gate, pushed it open, and let me through.

I made my connection at State Street, got on the Blue Line and made it to the Airport station, where I bashed my knee trying to haul my suitcase onto the shuttle bus. And so off to Logan, where I entered the huge, sterile terminal and prepared for a nice easy check-in via one of the many kiosks. I entered my code, and saw this message: "PLEASE SEE AGENT." So I dragged my stuff into a long-ish line, and waited. And waited. When I got to the front of the line, Delta Agent Joan informed me that my flight to Atlanta was delayed, so delayed that there's no way in hell that I am going to be able to make my connecting flight to Nashville. I stood there, smiling so hard that I could feel my molars cracking, and listened as she scanned her computer for other flights. "Hm...nope...sold out." Finally, she told me she could put me on a direct flight to Nashville....in about 7 hours. Fine. I jokingly said that I've always found Logan International Airport to be a rather nice place to spend the better part of a day, and that's when Joan smiled benevolently and gave me two vouchers for both breakfast and lunch.

At first, everything was okay. I was floating on that pinkish cloud of having narrowly-avoided disaster, and I got a bagel and coffee on Delta's tab. But as the hours dragged on, and I watched people board their flights -- flights that were all LEAVING ON TIME -- I started getting punchy. And I realized what a very lonely place the airport can be.

By 2 o'clock, I had made several laps around the terminal, stopped in every magazine and last-minute souvenir shop, and read ALL ABOUT Ellen and Portia's wedding...twice. So I was elated when I recognized a small band of Boston Ballet employees, who were taking the very flight that I had been squeezed into. There are many of us nonprofit arts folks who use this software, and I knew that I was bound to run into some familiar faces, but boy howdy, I was so happy to see them I nearly burst into tears.

So we sat there and traded gossip about who moved on to such-and-such a symphony, who's no longer in Audience Services, and who's still a giant prick, until we got our boarding call. And that's when we learned that we were taking a puddle jumper to Nashville.

At that point, I was just like, "Fine. Whatever. I just wanna go SOMEWHERE other than Terminal A kthxbai." The plane was smelly, our flight attendant looked like a combination of Rod Stewart and Gollum, but at least I was finally in the air.

Now, as I've said, I worked myself into a smallish lather a couple of nights before leaving, reading all these horrible reviews of where I would be staying. I had pretty much steeled myself to expect a room not much bigger than my cubicle at work, with soiled bedding and cigarette burns in the carpet. So when I finally collapsed in a weeping heap once I got in the door, I was pleasantly surprised to see through my tears that my room was not bad at all.

I mean, I don't require much. I'm sure this isn't exactly 5 stars to some of you, but given what I'd convinced myself I'd be staying in, it's nowhere near a hovel.

In fact, the only thing really wrong with my room is the hairdryer. I knew that every room came with one, so I didn't bother packing my salon-quality, bright red ion cannon. But when I opened up the closet, I saw the SADDEST HAIRDRYER IN THE WORLD. You know the little plastic hairdryers you get in those $1.99 "My First Salon" toys you see in the cereal aisle at the supermarket? That's what this hairdryer is.

I had arrived too late to check in at the conference registration window, and I also missed the big "kick-off" dinner at the Schermerhorn, but at that point, I was so fried that all I wanted to do was watch the DNC until I passed out.

More to come....

lisamcc at 10:06 p.m.

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