One Hell Of A Commute

(A Day in The Life Of My Girl)

As my long time readers already know, my girlfriend, Patricia, lives with me here on St. Simons Island Georgia, but her primary job function is located in Elgin, Illinois. She is, as I write, on her way back home tonight after spending two nights working in her “other office” in Elgin. Only a select few seasoned business travelers know what she actually goes through each week in accomplishing her duties.

I lived ten years spending several hours each day commuting to and from work in the Atlanta metropolitan area. It’s a wonder that I didn’t have a stroke or a heart attack dealing with the ingrates and morons I faced in traffic each day.

I also spent another ten years driving all over the Southeastern US and flying to points unknown selling my air-pollution-control/energy-recovery products and systems to everybody that had a smokestack on their property. I thought that I knew everything about business travel.

I WAS WRONG.

If you haven’t traveled every week for a living, you probably believe that traveling is a fun, glamorous, wonderful ritual. Well, it is…for about six months…after that…

YOU ARE SO MISTAKEN.

Here is how your life works when you travel for a living…

Tuesday morning 4:00 AM--The alarm clock goes off…time to wake up. Dutiful boyfriend (that would be me,) having been awake on the living room sofa for three or four hours blogging and reading news on the internet, steps in to verify that the alarm has done it’s job and that a position of verticality is being assumed.

After wiping the sleep from your eyes, you step into the shower while dutiful boyfriend (DB) places English muffin in toaster and pours glass of orange juice. DB also fires up clothes iron and presses slacks and blouse while checking internet web sites for air traffic control conditions and weather on each end of the ensuing journey.

The Internet is a wonderful, yet aggravating asset when you travel for a living. The FAA maintains this site that provides pseudo-real-time information about the delays and flow of air traffic on a regional and national basis. We use the site every time Pat travels. The only problem is, when your flight leaves at 6:10 AM the system doesn’t have a chance to receive any bad news when it comes to weather or equipment delays, it is often useless at that time of the morning.

Next we look at the local weather on St. Simons and the weather at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. Based on the weather reports, I pick out the over coats and gloves that Pat will carry with her.

Over the past few weeks, the temperature in Chicago has been equal to if not greater than that here on the Georgia coast. In the winter, however, she has seen temperature swings of over fifty degrees F in the six hours it takes to make the trip from Brunswick/Glynn County Airport, through Atlanta’s Hartsfield Airport, to Chicago’s O’Hare. The shock of going from 60 degrees to 20 degrees is obvious.

After arrival at O’Hare and struggling through a mile of passenger terminals and picking up her luggage at baggage claim, she boards a rental car bus at “ground transportation” and wanders off to a strange motor vehicle. When she is driving solo, they inevitably give her a SUV or mini-van. When she is meeting a group of three or four “super-sized” co-workers, they get the Toyota four door sedan.

Go Figure?

The good news is that the Hotel in Elgin treats Pat like a Queen and they even reserve the same two or three rooms (not all at once) for her when she is in town, so she can at least get on the elevator on each trip and know where she is going after dinner and a few drinks in the Bennegan’s Restaurant located in the lobby.

So, she works for two or three or four days, packs up her luggage, and does everything in reverse. IF the weather is OK and IF the airplanes all work and IF there isn’t some other unforeseen circumstance, she gets back to our little island home about 11:30 on Thursday night. If there is a problem, she gets home on Friday sometime between 11:00 AM and 5:00 PM, having spent a harrowing night in a hotel in the Atlanta area. IT SUCKS.

The good news is, she just called me from the Brunswick airport and she’ll be here in 20 minutes.

LIFE IS GOOD ON THE ISLAND AGAIN.