To this day I am unable to take even the slightest whiff of whiskey without feeling ill. This story was written back in 2005 while living with Tom in Palo Alto.
It has become very clear to me that a major part of my J-O-B in ‘05 is travel. Business travel is something that has a certain mystique to it when you’re not doing it and a certain mildewy smell to it when you are immersed in it. I am still relatively new at trying to figure out its nuances and from time to time I still make major blunders. Like getting blurry-eyed drunk the night before a cross-country flight.
I’m not exactly sure what happened last Saturday night other than that the number of drinks that I put in my body was apparently vastly more than my body is willing to process. It started out innocently enough at my apartment with Tom and the neighbors and quickly escalated into more people and more alcohol. Remind me never to have someone I’ve only met twice pour me an undisclosed drink in a plastic red cup. Around 10pm we got the genius idea to mosey on down the street to a local club and do some dancing. Though really it was just more drinking coupled with us shaking our proverbial groove things. Laughing, having a ball, Tom and I decided it was time for shots of whiskey.
My friends, when Tom and I make the call for shots of whiskey, flying tackle us and drag us home because the night is not heading in what Dr. Phil would call a “positive direction.”
Unfortunately, the other (drunk) people around us rallied around the cry of WHISKEY SHOTS FOR ALL! It was about this time that the population of the club suddenly doubled. Interesting. I was pretty sure that the number of people in the club hadn’t actually doubled and became suspicious of my perceptive abilities. It was then that I remembered that I had to fly to Boston the next morning. Shiza. Miraculously I managed to get myself home and into bed, albeit on top of the covers and fully clothed.
It is entirely possible that sometime during the descent from standing to laying down I fell fast asleep. This is how I failed to notice when 5 people dog-piled on top of me 30 minutes later. I slept right through it. At about 9:30am the next morning a haggard-looking Tom poked his head in and asked me when I needed to be at the airport. Since my flight was leaving at 10:20am, my response was a resounding “Now.” Oh, and I hadn’t packed yet. Bleary eyed but motivated I power-packed, praying that I wouldn’t forget anything and asked Tom to take me to the airport, a task he begrudgingly accepted knowing that I would owe him BIG one day.
When I arrived at the airport I walked through security, stepped onto the plane, buckled in, and we left. The first leg of the flight was pretty good because I quite literally passed out. Unshowerd and wearing the same clothes as the day before, I’m sure I was an absolute delight to be around in the open expanse of the airplane cabin. A mere 20 minutes from Dallas, one of the passengers got it in his head to faint and not execute a timely recovery. Declaring a medical emergency, the pilot made the call to land in Lubock, TX. Yes, Lubock, TX.
Let me make it very clear to you that when planes “land” in emergency medical situations they do not drift down to the ground, they DROP OUT OF THE SKY. As I’m sure you can imagine this was not the most pleasant experience for my fragile state. So we landed, got him situated, took off again through turbulent skies and 20 minutes later we began our descent into Dallas traveling right back through the turbulence. Damn, those little vomit bags look awfully small, don’t they? I managed to keep all of my food to myself but had to run to my connecting flight to Boston.
By this time the storm’s intensity had increased at least tenfold and there was talk that we wouldn’t even be able to take off. Unfortunately, I had Chuck Yeager piloting the plane and he decided to risk it. For 30 minutes I experienced the most intense roller coaster ever designed. Sudden drops of 10 feet or more were commonplace and even the most stout-hearted had a white-knuckle grip on their armrests. I closed my eyes and found a happy place, promising my neighbor that I would indeed vomit into the aisle if need be. 3 harrowing hours later I found myself on the ground at Logan airport. Feeling pretty good about things by that time, I strolled on out into the Boston night. Only to find that it was 12 degrees outside. Holy hell do I have a lot to learn about business travel.
