Hello from Sacramento, CA! I had to come to town to attend a five hour meeting this afternoon that will take a total of about 26 or so hours out of my life. I left SLC at 8:30 this morning and I will return to SLC around 9:30 tomorrow morning at a cost of somewhere just over $1,000. Worth it? I guess we'll see.
I was talking to my mom about traveling for work last night. My sister was in Atlanta for work last week, and here I am in Sacramento today. Mom seemed a little bummed that she didn't travel for her work (she was a teacher). I did my best to convince her that traveling for work isn't really that much fun. I actually kind of yelled at her (sorry Mom). Hopefully Lizzie had some fun in Atlanta, but I can tell you that my day hasn't been super awesome.
First of all, there were about a jillion business travelers flying out of SLC this morning. The security line moved pretty smoothly and quickly, but when you get down to it, going through security isn't a cake-walk. I had my laptop, so you have to take that out of the bag and put it in it's own container, take off your shoes and your coat and empty your pockets and take off your belt. Fortunately SLC has one of those walk-in scanner machines so I didn't have to have a pat down because of my metal knee.
Second, airplanes are kind of small and most people on domestic flights these days just carry-on their luggage. The plane I was on today was quite small and the carry-on bags that would fit on a larger plane absolutely don't fit in the overhead compartments of the smaller planes. I saw one lady try to wrestle her standard size carry-on bag into the overhead. It didn't work out for her. I had two bags: my laptop bag and my little Sweden bag that Mia gave me earlier this year. I was pretty proud of myself for getting my clothes into the Sweden bag! Of course, I'm just here on a quick overnight trip, so I didn't need too many clothes.
Third, rental cars and navigation. For one thing, here in Sacramento, you have to take a bus to the car rental terminal. It's far from the air terminal - not walking distance. That means that there are lots of travelers that are trying to get to the car rental building. I waited in the line for at least 20 minutes - and it wasn't warm here this morning! - and I just barely made it onto the first bus. The rental experience itself was fine because I was the first person in the line, so that was good. My rental is a Chevy Sonic which is a small compact car. The seat was reclined back further than I like, but I couldn't figure out how to put the back up straight (my fault) so I wasn't very comfortable. Next thing, I have to figure out where I'm going. Fortunately, my beloved iPhone does have a navigation program so I got where I needed to go in plenty of time.
Fourth, the meeting itself. I got in about 90 minutes early, so I went to the meeting place and hung out while people started trickling in. The bad parts: I had no idea where the restrooms were, because there wasn't one in the trailer I was in and I was too embarrassed to ask the two guys who were there with me where they were. (My fault.) The room did have windows, but the shades were drawn, probably to keep people like me from staring outside. The temperature in the room fluctuated from obscenely hot to frigid cold. There was no happy middle ground. And worst of all, we didn't actually fix anything that we were there to fix. We identified more issues and will work to get answers over the next 30 days. It was my first time to be involved with this particular group and I'm not necessarily a member of this "task force" so I'm not sure what my role is. We'll see what happens.
Fifth, the meeting ended at 5pm and since I have a super-early (6:30 am) flight tomorrow, all I wanted to do was get to the hotel and relax and get to sleep pretty early. I slept poorly last night at home - not unusual before I travel - and I'm not convinced I will sleep well here tonight because I will be nervous about over-sleeping and missing my flight. Anyway, the navigation system said it would take about 24 minutes to get from where I was in Rancho Cordova to the hotel near the airport. Because of traffic, though, it took closer to an hour. There are lots of people here in California and they all wanted to go home at 5:00. Go figure.
The good thing is that the hotel is nice and the room is nice and the bed is comfy. I ordered room service because I wasn't interested in venturing out to find some fast food. There isn't anything very close to the hotel and since I'm alone and it's dark and I'm unfamiliar with the area, I figured room service would be ok. I had a little floor picnic starring a French dip sandwich and some fries while I watched Entertainment Tonight. Now I've got Monday Night Football on until Jane the Virgin comes on. I'm ready to crawl into this king size bed and turn off the lights and read until my show comes on - I'm not sure if it will be 8:00 or 9:00 though.
Well Mom, what do you think? Still think you missed out on traveling for work? When the best part is hanging out in a hotel room with sole control of the remote, it's just not that great. I'd rather be at home on my couch asking MT if I can watch Jane the Virgin on the big TV. Oh yeah - and the channel with JtV isn't even HD. GRRR!
Have a good night, friends!
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