Last week I had the obligation (not privilege, not opportunity, and certainly not pleasure) of going to Peach Tree City, Georgia to attend my firm's national training.
Little did I know when I made my flight reservation, this would be the first time since 1993 that Georgia would get a big snow storm. Needless to say, the city of Atlanta did not know how to handle said storm...they would fail as boy scouts due to lack of preparation. I later found out that the city only has 12 snow plows, two of which were broken down at the time of this "severe" weather.
After having my first flight canceled, I rebooked a red eye out of Seattle to arrive in Atlanta at 6:30am the morning of the first day of training. The conference center was 20 minutes away from the airport, so I WAS going to make it on time. However, after standing on a snowy curb for 45 minutes I called the hotel shuttle service to discover that transportation was shut down because of the snow.
With the shuttle ETA being unknown, I shuffled back into the airport main terminal and found a nice comfy chair to make myself at home in. The only thing that would force me to surrender my chair to the other stranded travelers who were circling like vultures would be the need to use the restroom or find an outlet to charge in my rapidly decreasing phone battery...
After two hours of pondering how to stay productive in an airport I got a phone call from the hotel. The highway was still closed and no taxi was will to brave the side streets, so they were sending me to a nearby hotel to wait until conditions changed. All I had to do was take the train to Midtown station and the hotel will be right there.
I lug my suitcase onto an already crowded train and ride it to the instructed station. I get out at said station, yet the hotel is nowhere in sight. To add to this ever evolving adventure, it was snowing; just adding to the several inches already covering the streets.
Shuddering at the potential of wondering in the snow in the wrong direction, I pulled out my trusty iphone 4 (insert product placement plug here), looked up the hotel and began walking in the right direction. After half a block I gave up on trying to wheel my suitcase through the snow and just picked the not-so-small thing up and carried it the rest of the way.
Once at the hotel this weary traveler took a shower, a nap, and a detailed assessment of why I am overcommitted to my job...
Around 2pm, I decided I was hungry enough to go forage for food. While getting a burger to go at a local restaurant called "Taco Mac" (I was confused too) the hotel called and said they could now send a shuttle to the airport, I just had to get back there soon. So I grabbed my burger and started hurrying back to the hotel. In my rush I forgot that my shoes lacked any traction whatsoever, so resultantly I slipped on an icy grate and fell. It hurt.
When I finally got to the CORRECT hotel, I was tired, hungry and in need of more PTO (paid time off) to recover; however, I still had 2 and half days of tax training ahead of me.
I gave it my best and here is what I learned from LTS Consultant training:
- Never fly a red eye unless you only plan to sleep the next day.
- Never open a camelbak water bottle in an airplane...the cabin pressure causes the water to shoot out of the bottle like a sprinkler gone haywire.
- Never wear TOMS shoes to walk several blocks in the snow or over icy grates.
- Never travel with a half charged phone - it got kinda tense near the end to find an outlet.
- Never, under any circumstance, go to Peach Tree City, Georgia if they think a flake of snow will fall.
- Oh, and S Corporations can't have foreign investors...
