I spent the weekend in New York City at a board meeting, one of several trips I take each year for meetings and conferences. The meeting was productive, and I enjoyed re-visiting New York with a few spare hours to dine in Little Italy and meet an old friend for dessert. But getting there was stressful. My flight left Albuquerque an hour late while the air crew waited for a mechanic to check a leak in the lavatory and complete the required paperwork. So I had to sprint down the concourse to make the final boarding call for my connecting flight in Atlanta. Overall, I spent more time in transit than at the meeting.
I’ve developed a love/hate relationship with travel as airliners have become Kafkaesque cattle cars. My travel skills are fairly good: I pack light, arrive at the airport early, wear slip-on shoes for the security line, print my boarding pass at home and arrange ground transportation in advance. I avoid connecting flights with less than an hour’s layover and even carry a battery-operated book light in case the reading lamp over my seat is inoperative (which came in handy on this trip).
But in the last few years much of my travel has been a study in Murphy’s Law. I arrived at a conference in Atlanta a day late when my flight from Albuquerque was cancelled because of rain in Dallas. Last year I missed a meeting in Florida because my flight was delayed for six hours. A flight to Chicago was cancelled after the aircraft left the gate because the crew had maxed out its working hours and was no longer “legal.” I stopped using one airline because its Albuquerque flights were unreliable (maybe they can’t cope with the altitude here). What’s really depressing is that my travel experience is relatively normal — or perhaps the new normal — because I have not experienced the hours-long tarmac incarceration that we hear about in the news. Not yet, at least.
This may be the last in-person weekend meeting for this particular board. We are considering Skype videoconferencing in the future and right now that sounds like a splendid idea.
I plan to travel more in the next few years but dread flying to the places I want to visit. Wish I could drive to Europe or, better yet, get myself teleported. Beam me to Paris, Scotty.