Planning

Photo by Christopher Alvarenga on Unsplash

A year after my very first trip to the U.S. (California) I was planning another trip, this time to Florida. 

I had accrued so much overtime that my boss urged me to reduce my hourly balance by taking time off. Additionally he approved a large portion of the hours to be paid out. So basically the costs for the flight ticket as well as the rental car were taken care of. Yay me!

The only restriction I had, was to be back for my class. At the time, I was taking a continuing education course in Human Resources, and we had classes every Wednesday afternoon and every other Saturday.

I left Easter Sunday for Miami where I met up with a friend who was there for business. Once meetings were done, we enjoyed going out for dinner at Bayside Marketplace (the equivalent of San Francisco's Pier 39). During the day I explored Miami Beach and Key Biscayne on my own, and a couple of days later (after the key fiasco) I moved on to Orlando. Hello, Mickey Mouse :-) 

This post is not about sightseeing though.  (If you long for some travel stories, check out this post.)

It's about the uncomfortable situation I had maneuvered myself into by my poor travel planning.

I left for Atlanta on Tuesday Morning. Things were hectic at our International gate. Every couple of minutes, airline employees announced via loudspeaker that the flight to Zurich, Switzerland, was overbooked, and that they were looking for people who were willing to give up their seat and fly later, as in tomorrow. They were going to pay for accommodation and food during the prolonged stay.

It sounded somewhat intriguing. I had to be on that flight though. 

I prayed that I was not one of the passengers who might lose their seat. How do they even  determine who gets to fly?

Everything went well for me, I got on my flight. It was a little delayed. I think I was originally supposed to land at 9am Wednesday morning, and in fact it was almost 10am by the time we touched the ground. 

Of course I was waiting forever at baggage claim, and I missed the train I wanted to take. 

If I had been relaxed and optimistic before, I was getting increasingly nervous and sweaty now. 

My plan was to go home, take a shower, have lunch and drive to school, which was a good 40 minutes away.

What I ended up doing was I grabbed a sandwich at the airport that I ate in the train, then I took a taxi from the train station to my home, took a really quick shower and raced off to school.

I made it in time, and I was very pleased with myself.

Over the course of the afternoon, however, I got so tired. I almost fell asleep in the classroom, and all of a sudden, I wasn't too pleased with myself anymore.

Had I lost my mind?

Who makes travel arrangements this tight?

I was going to have to drive home while being totally jet lagged. 

How dumb and irresponsible of me.

My only excuse is that I was a really inexperienced international traveler back then. As for my other mishaps over the course of this blog series... 

Well, what can I say. I went though great lengths to gather blog fodder for you guys. How about that?