Back to Back Trips

Its been a while. I'm finding out it's hard to update when you are traveling and it's also hard to find the motivation to do so. For the past two weeks I've been on the road. Lets see where I've been:

Last week I traveled to Los Angeles for business. We awarded a large contract to a new to us Contractor. Last week we all gathered together to go over the contract, meet our counterparts on the Contractor side and do some touchy feely exercises designed to break the ice. First let me say that traveling by air really sucks these days. Even flying out on a wide body 767 it felt like a cattle car. The plane was overbooked and they were offering free round trip tickets to get people to give up their seats. I was in the middle seat of the middle three seats in the next to last row of the plane. Can we say long flight? Six hours worth due to head winds, Yuck. We stayed at a Hilton, which was very nice, but they charged $10 for Internet. In this day and age who charges for Internet? Even Super 8 doesn't do that. The meetings were held at one of the hotel meeting room so that was convenient. They fed us well for breakfast and lunch. Dinner we were on our own to explore for ourselves. Luckily there was a brew pub next door to the hotel so we didn't have to walk far. The meetings, on the whole, went well. Of course at the beginning of a new contract it's all roses and sunshine. Lets see how things are at this time next year. Our last meeting was on Thursday and my contingent was split with half of us taking the red eye home Thursday night and the rest flying home Friday. Frankly I hate wasting a whole day on an airplane so the red eye appeals to me. I can sleep on the plane and get into Dulles at 6:00 in the morning, drive home, take a nap and be ready and bright eye in time for lunch. Before we left LAX Thursday night, my boss and I did the touristy thing and had drinks out on the Santa Monica Pier as the sun set over the Pacific. As business trips go it was better than most, but in general business trips suck.

Currently I'm sitting in a condo on the beach at Cocoa Beach, Florida. Sounds like fun, right? You would be only half right. Being on the beach anywhere rocks anytime. But right now it's a freezing 35 degrees. In Florida. This is so not right. No walks on the beach today. It is suppose to slowly warm up over the next few days, but still. We'll have to indulge in indoor fun and games before all the kids show up. I'll explain what has brought us down to Florida in the next day or so. We decided to drive down as Daughter#2 and The Son In Law didn't want to fly and we decided to carpool. We picked them up in Richmond around 10:00 PM and started our trip. I drove the first leg. It snowed on and off all the way through North Carolina, which was a bit weird. Around Lumberton , NC I-95 was closed due to a bridge repair and we had to do a detour for about 10 miles. I made it to the Georgia state line before turning the driving over to The Son In Law. Part of the reason for driving down versus flying was so Daughter#2, who is working on an on line Masters Degree form the University of Florida, could stop in Gainesville and meet her Advisor and current Professor and attend a lecture and a lab., We pulled into Gainesville around 9:00 in the morning all of us pretty wiped out after driving all night. We had breakfast at the 43rd Street Deli and dropped Daughter#2 and The Son In Law on campus and headed off to the beach. The plan was for Daughter#2 and The Son In Law to hang on campus to attend the classes and then camp overnight at a nearby national forest before joining Ann and I at the beach. However as the forecast was calling for wind chills in the teens, they decided to ditch the camping idea and they drove down to beach last night. They are currently out hiking at a wildlife management area, Hippies.

Time to get cleaned up for the day. Hopefully I can find time to update a little more regularly. Till next time.