Worst. Business. Trip. EVER.

Thursday, February 17, 2011
You know, I've done a fair amount of travel. When Uncle Sam was my travel agent, my trips were typically overseas, and the military took care of ground (or sea) transportation and other such petty matters.

In my civilian life, I have continued to travel, on and off. But unlike some of my friends and family who also travel fairly often, I rarely go to the same place more than twice (with the exception of conferences in Las Vegas). I zip around the country, going here and there.

In the last year, I've actually had pretty good experiences in my travels - I've made a few wrong turns, had to run to catch a connecting flight a time or two, but nothing too frustrating.

Yeah. You know that wasn't going to last.

I'm scheduled to be Stamford, CT this week. So yesterday morning I left for the airport, ready to do my thing. When I went to check in for my flight, AirTran couldn't find my reservation.

Uh-Oh.

I called American Express Travel, who manages our company's travel services. It seems that AirTran canceled my ticket for reasons unknown. Thanks, AirTran!

So I called my boss - a same day ticket to the east coast was going to cost well over a thousand dollars, and I wanted some direction before I pulled the trigger. My boss directed me to buy the ticket, so I did so, and then spent the next four hours in the airport, waiting for my later flight. Is there anyplace on earth more depressing than an airport? Besides the DMV, I mean.

Once I arrived in White Plains, NY, I went to get my rental car at Budget. I had requested a GPS system in my car, but Budget didn't have any, due to the late change in my itinerary. So no GPS for me. Thanks, Budget!

Have you ever tried to drive in this part of the country, at night, with no GPS, with only Googled directions? It can't be done. The street signs for minor intersections are few and far between. When they do have them deployed, they face the wrong way so you can't see them, and are manufactured with material that does not reflect light. Fully 25% of the major intersections also did not have street signs. Clearly everyone who drives here either has GPS or a really stunning sense of direction. I had neither. Thanks, CT and NY communities!

I'm sure you can imagine where this is going.

Yes, in an hour's time I was hopelessly lost, and not only didn't know where I was, but couldn't find any street, any landmark that was included in my directions. As I was helplessly wandering around, I finally saw a sign for the Rye Brook Hilton. This was not the hotel I had reservations for, and I was quite sure the cost was going to be higher than the Holiday Inn, but by this time I was done. I pulled in and the nice young man at the desk was very empathetic as he set me up with a room for two nights.

I found my room, and decided to go find something to drink. Of course, I got lost in the hotel. Unbelievable. Clearly, my sense of direction is LEGENDARY.

I'll be leaving early for my appointment today, in the hopes that I will be able to find my way to the meeting site in the daylight without a GPS or a Guide Dog. Don't hold your breath.

However, as my friend Eric notes, no one's tried to shoot me yet. And the Rye Town Hilton has the BEST SHOWERS EVAH. So it's not all bad.

7 comments:

vince said...

So what exactly did you do to piss off Murphy so badly?

I've found Google's directions are helpful when you have a general idea of where you're going, but relying on them when you have no idea is looking to drive off a cliff.

Janiece said...

Vince, that's on my itinerary for today.

mom in northern said...

Maybe it is time to spend some buck on a portable GPS that you can take with you. Or maybe a phone that comes with one...then you will always know where you are.

Right...

Warner (aka ntsc) said...

I did a lot of my travel before Google or GPS.

I flew one particular flight from LA to Newark so often that the flight attendants knew what I drank.

Eric said...

Funny how some hotels realize: we can make up for so much shit with a nice showerhead.

I'm not knocking 'em for it. It's a little thing they can do to make sure no matter how cruddy your trip is, you can at least have a nice shower.

Good luck with everything else. :)

Jeri said...

Janiece doesn't need to piss off Murphy - she IS Murphy.

And I'm a fan of a really comfy bed, a clean bathroom, decent climate control, and sadly more important than anything else, useful wireless Internet.

John the Scientist said...

Bloody fucking hell, I had to just do a trip using Hertz instead of my normal Avis because it was a one-way rental and Avis was out of cars.

Fucking Hertz GPS was like the GPS version of Asteroids. Seriously, the display looked like a late-70s Atari game, and THERE WAS NO KEYPAD. You had to punch a single button multipletime to change letter when typing an address. Like texting in the pre-smartphone era.

Then, I find it has a limited number of addresses stored. I'm going to a major suburb of DC, and no, repeat no streets in the computer from that town. It just had the city center. What the hell, I can find my way from there. I'm known as the human GPS inmy house. And wonder of wonders, I noticed a sign for the road I was supposed to be on and jumped on it, ignoring the GPS's frantic attempts to send me to the parking meter marking the geographic center of town. I found my own way to Philadelphia. And they had the temerity to charge me $15 bucks for the GPS.

And the name of this Hertz proprietary GPS? "NeverLost". "Never even fucking started", you mean, right?

Could have been worse, though. Could have been like the trip I had in rural NC, where the road I took to my destination was closed by the time I returned. I turned off the mountain and wound up so far deep in the Carolina pine forest that the GPS lost signal and then we came to the end of the paved road...

Sorry, but not surprized to hear you had a bad experience in NY and CT. Don't get me started about signage around here. And did you notice that the lines on the road skimp on reflective paint, too? WTF is up with that? Really goes will with the solar powered snow removal system...