February 19th, 2005
As I type this I am sitting in the Milwaukee airport waiting to board my flight. The fact that it is 6:00 AM (which, in my time zone, is really 4:00 AM) should not really be all that significant.
Why? (I hear nobody asking.)
Because the good folks at my work who arranged these flights obviously want to torture me to death. Here's my schedule for the last few days (in Wisconsin):
Date & Time Event Feb. 16th 11:30 PM Flight arrives in Milwaukee Feb. 17th 12:00 AM Get rental car Feb. 17th 12:15 AM Get lost driving around Milwaukee Feb. 17th 2:15 AM Arrive at the hotel, 100 miles away from airport Feb. 17th 6:30 AM Interrupt my second REM cycle to wake up Feb. 17th 8:00 AM Arrive at customers. Thank my lucky stars they are nice people. (Customers own you when they are paying for your time, so there is no business case for them to be nice to you ... ) Feb. 17th to Feb. 18th (early) No worries, I am on a normal schedule. Feb. 18th 7:30 PM Maybe it's Friday night, but no partying for me ... I'm on my way to bed. (Why? See below.) Feb. 19th 2:30 AM Rise and shine, sunshine, it's time to drive to the airport! Feb. 19th 4:45 AM Get lost driving around Milwaukee. Feb. 19th 5:15 AM Find airport, return car, check in, etc. Feb. 19th 7:30 AM Flight leaves Milwaukee. The four-hour turn-around on the first day is bad enough, but the 7:30 AM plane departure coupled with the fact that I needed a two-hour drive and a two-hour pre-board time tacked onto it, made life very difficult. It meant trying to sleep from 7:30PM until 2:30 AM. (Actually, I did sleep from about 8:00 PM to 11:00 PM, and again from midnight to 2:30 AM, so at least I am on more than survival sleep.)
Another troubling issue about this trip is that in order to fly from Vancouver to Milwaukee I had to stop over in Phoenix. Yes ... that's right. I flew 3-1/2 hours South, transfered to another plane and then flew 3-1/2 hours Northeast. And the return trip involves the same cities in reverse order.
So, as you can see, the logistics of this trip were not thought through very well.
And being slightly sick doesn't help. Aye, there's the rub: I had the stomach 'flu in the middle of January, a cold at the end of January, and now another cold (though not a bad one) in the middle of February. And I almost never used to get sick before ... feh ...