It was a long four hours drive from Houston to Dallas last evening. Fortunately, I was traveling with two of my very funny team mates – Bob Hickey and Mark Meade. Somewhere near Rice, Texas, we came across this humongous item that was being transported on I-45. To realize the size of the object, check out the size of the car near the head of the truck and then compare the size of the cars towards the end of the truck to the object. I had no idea what that monstrous item was.

“What is it?”, I asked. The ever-smart Mark lifted his eyes from his phone and nonchalantly replied “Oh! It is a blade of a wind turbine” – like he sees them every time he drives out on his street or something. When we see the wind turbines in the field (generating electricity from wind), we don’t get a good idea at all how humongous these blades are.

So, we took bets on guessing the size of the blade. I came at 100 feet. Bob at 150 feet. And Mark at 120 feet. And Mark was right (the standard ones are 120-125 feet tall; that is a twelve story building!). From that we went to think of all sorts of trivia about wind turbines and blades. The one that took us most time to figure out was – how many bolts would they use and what size the bolts are. After a long discussion, we turned to that one version of truth – Google! A few searches later, we found the answers. Nearly 25,000 bolts and some of the bolts are 6 cm in diameter!! We were trying to imagine how they would look. And eventually decided to change the topic. So, we looked outside – just in time to see that we were driving along another truck carrying the connectors with all the bolt patterns!! All we had to do was lift our noses from our iPhone Google searches and just look out!

I had already speeded up to pass the truck. Realizing that we should keep a picture of the bolt pattern, I took the nearest exit and a couple of deft U-turns later, managed to catch up with the truck again. And that is how we got the picture in the bottom!

By the way, at that size of the blade, even at a sedentary speed of three seconds to one rotation would mean that the tip of the blade is moving at the speed of nearly 175 miles per hour (300 kmph)!!!

Today is shaping up to be one of those days that promises to test my fortitude and attitude to the max.

Woke up late? Check!
With a severe headache? Check!
Quickly glanced emails from office to realize that there are not one, not two but three – errrrr, how should I put it – “interesting” situations to deal with? Check!
Could not find rental car in the hotel parking building? Check!
Realized that I have booked myself to fly back home on the wrong day? Check!
Got a call from Sharmila that washer dryer is not working anymore? Check!
And that the new puppy has chewed thru the electric wires in my bar area? Check!

As my friend Bob Hickey would ask, “So, other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?” 🙂

Like in every trip, this morning too, I checked in my small suitcase, cleared security and strolled towards my gate at DC airport. As most frequent fliers in Delta might know, there is a flight on the hour every hour from DC to Atlanta and the four digit number usually starts with 1 and ends with 39. And in the evening, when they run out of digits, they switch to starting with 2. And the flights always leave from one of the few adjoining gates 16-21.

I reached my gate, looked at the board (see attached picture), checked that Atlanta was written on the board and waited. The boarding had already started. The goal being always to be one of the last passengers to get on to avoid all the rush at the gate, I just walked up and down the area making a few phone calls. Eventually, the queue was coming to an end and I joined it.

Just as I was going to board the plane as literally the last passenger, the machine stopped me. It refused to take my boarding pass much as the gate agent tried. She eventually asked me where I was going. I said Atlanta. She pointed out that, that was the problem. I was trying to board a Alaska Airlines flight headed to Seattle!!

I looked up again – sure enough it said Atlanta. Except, that was for the gate on the left and that flight was not leaving for another three hours!!! I turned around and saw another gate where the boarding was finishIng up. Quickly paced there and of course, that was my flight! Still managed to achieve my goal of being the last person to get on to the plane!! (But not before coming back to the wrong gate to take a picture!!! )

As I finally got on to the plane, the first person I met was the same stewardess who was with us in our flight to DC yesterday. We had chatted for some time to get to know her life story (I am sure you are not surprised 🙂 ). She promptly asked me “Are you stalking me”? I truthfully answered “If I were, I sure am confused where to look for you” :-).

It had been a long day. I was returning home. And a teammate was connecting thru Atlanta. I knew I wanted to go home as early as I could but I could not resist spending an hour with this teammate of mine – if you knew Mark Meade yourself, you would know that I am not the one to blame.
Anyways, the whole idea was to go to a bar and order something and talk a little about business. We sure went to a bar. And ordered a drink.
And the rest of the plan fell apart. We just started talking to the two persons on our either side. And the four of us just kept talking as if we had been friends for a long time! Eventually, we found out that both were chefs – one (Ron) for the much acclaimed “One Flew South” at Atlanta airport and the other (John) had a business of his own. As strange as it might sound, they found out that they were in the same business at that bar while talking to us. And that too because John had missed a flight!
Mark and I was like – “Forget work…. Let’s find out what a day in a chef’s life looks like….”
We had a great evening..

This is in a local bar…

I had to get up very early morning and hit the road to get to an early morning flight. I guess I was a little sleepy or the onramps to I-94 from downtown Milwaukee were too confusing – I landed up taking a couple of wrong turns.

You could almost detect a faint sense of frustration come thru Google Maps as the voice sternly asked me to take a “slight left turn”. Except that there were two left turns there and the last time I took the “slight” one, I landed up on the wrong road and had to come back up again. Which apparently led Google Maps to get slighted.

So, I glanced down to see if I could get some visual clues from the phone. And that is when I caught Siri cussing “f” words at me 🙂

Jokes aside, what was that all about?

I could hear the wheels of the plane coming down. That was my cue to take the earplugs off the Amjad Sabri qawwali I was enjoying and pack my stuff up to land. Moment I took my earplugs out, I could hear a lot yelling going on upfront. It appeared two male passengers were yelling at each other. One of them – a rather young gentleman – was clearly out of control. And there was a young lady trying desperately to defuse the situation. My biggest fear was it was a case of a psychiatric patient gone wrong. (Having two parents with psychiatric issues, that is often my first conclusion).

We landed smoothly and reached quickly to the gate. But you could see the person was perturbed – he just would not sit down and follow instructions. Full credit to Delta air hostesses for keeping their calm. It took us a couple of minutes after reaching the gate to get instructions to get up. At that point, I was sure it was a security issue. Very efficiently, St. Louis airport police showed up and promptly took him away without any incident. I later found out he was totally under the influence…

I took a few pictures but am posting one that does not show his face just to respect his right to privacy.

Never ever have I experienced this before…

Flew directly over the snow capped Statue of Liberty this morning….

I FORGOT TO PUT MY SUITCASE IN THE CAR!!
I froze in panic as I stared at the empty trunk of my car. The euphoria of finding a very convenient spot in the airport parking lot – literally next to the entry doors – was extremely short lived. As it happens so often during panic mode, my mind went through a whirlwind of thoughts and images over the next few seconds…

For a fraction of a second, I entertained the thought of going back home but promptly ditched it at the first thought of traffic clogged Atlanta roads during office time.

“Can I manage by buying clothes at my destination?”
“Depends upon where I am going and how much time I have”, I logically reasoned to myself.

“Speaking of which, where I am I going?” [That was the first bright thought I had this morning]
“WAIT A MINUTE. Where am I going? Why am I at the airport?”

A few nanoseconds of blanking out. And then I realized that I was in the wrong place!!

I had a breakfast meeting at a hotel near the airport!!! I was not supposed to be at the airport at all!! (at least that explained why I did not have a suitcase).

It turns out that I had put my car and my mind in autopilot mode while driving to meet an executive at a hotel near the airport. I was so lost in my thoughts that I simply followed my every week pattern and showed up inside the airport parking lot!!!

“Now I am going to be late for the breakfast meeting and I am behind on coffee”, I thought as I got back into the car.

It sure beat missing a suitcase on a trip though 🙂