The Joys of Travel

Last week I traveled to Denver to attend and cover the NFRC's summer meeting. While the event resulted in many lively discussions, I'm not going to write about them here, you'll have to visit the www.usgnn.com or the USGlassmag.com "Only Here" page to read the scoop.

Instead I'd like to briefly stray from life in the glass industry, though still about something many of us deal with more often than not. I'm talking about the joys of traveling. I know plenty of you out there probably feel as though you spend more time than you'd like going from airplane to airplane, city to city.

I had a bit of airline drama myself last week traveling home from Denver. My flight departing was right on schedule an even landed in Atlanta early. So I headed from terminal A to terminal C where my flight was scheduled to take me home, departing at 9:55 p.m. I walked to the gate, only to learn there hadbeen a gate change. No worries, that happens all the time. I grabbed a quick bite, made a couple of phone calls and then headed to the new gate only to see, that once again there had been a gate change. Nice. So, once again I headed over to a new gate, only to see we were to be delayed by about 20 minutes, now departing at 10:15. p.m. OK, I said to myself, I can handle 20 minutes.

So I sat down to read a book. As the time approached 10:15 no announcements had been made about the flight ... 10:15 came and went and we finally got an announcement that we had a plane, which was undergoing some maintenance and, by the way, there's been a gate change. This is just getting crazy. So I grabbed my stuff, headed down to the new gate and by now it's pushing 11 p.m. At the new gate we learn we should depart by 12:05 a.m., as we're awaiting an in-bound aircraft ... you can imagine how I'm feeling by now. So I sit, I wait, I read, I make a phone call. Finally the plane arrives, people deplane, the crew prepares for the next flight and finally by midnight or so, we're in the air.

We landed a little before 1:30 a.m., all you need to know now is that I had an hour and 20 minute drive home, which put me getting to bed at around 4 a.m. Got to love travel.

I know this was a departure from what I usually write, but I knew so many of you could relate. I'd love to hear some of your travel stories, so shoot me an email or post a reply here.