Sub-title:  Lost again because I’m Stupid

 It has been a year since I have traveled overseas so I pull out my passport, blow the dust off it, and head out to the Salt Lake City International airport. I don’t really understand the international part since really where the heck can you fly to from Salt Lake City. I personally have to change planes in Atlanta, which of course is not too confusing given that the old line is “When you die you will have to change planes in Atlanta, on the way to heaven or hell.” I’m glad because I’d like to say goodbye to a bunch of my friends and I’m pretty sure we are not all going to the same place in the hereafter.

I leave Saturday morning so that I can arrive on Sunday. Nothing much happened in Salt Lake City, guess it never does. I check my oversized bag in at the counter and wait a pretty long time in a very slow security line. I have to pull my computer from my computer bag and decide to take off my shoes because for some reason an overweight, slightly balding, grey haired, almost 50 year old guy is the most likely profile of a terrorist.

I land in Atlanta around suppertime but since I have less than 40 minutes in Atlanta and I have already had a fabulous meal on the flight. I highly recommend what Delta refers to as their Steakhouse Selection. It was suppose to be a tenderloin, but it was not tender, kind of on the small size and could have been beef, venison, water buffalo or even very old and slightly dried out left over turkey. Rather than trying to continue to describe it I’ll end this by saying it was very small and I didn’t finish it.

In Atlanta, I came into Terminal "T" and of course my flight to England leaves from Terminal "E". The gates are the absolute farthest part from each other as possible. I go down to the train and hear an announcement explaining that due to delays on the track it might be best it people with short connections walk to their gates. I am carrying a bag which is too heavy, I am wearing a sweater, a winter coat, I got up too early, and my back hurts. I decide to walk. People somehow find it rude as I try and walk around them in a bit of a hurry as to not miss my plane and have to spend a night in the Atlanta airport inn instead of in England.

I make the plane to England but I am covered in a warm moist and thoroughly uncomfortable sweat. I am of course overjoyed that this is the beginning of a long overseas flight. Delta has decided to charge for drinks on international flights and since I am too cheap to pay four dollars for a beer. I decide to stick with ginger ale. I should sleep but unfortunately I can’t sleep on airplanes. I once flew across the Atlantic on a C-130 coming from an two week military exercise were I had only gotten about six hours of sleep during the whole exercise and even listening to the drone of the turboprops, more tired than I have ever been before in my life, I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t even try to this time.

I land at Gatwick airport London. It really isn’t in London since it will take me more than an hour to drive into town. I have rented a car, because I am an idiot. I step into Hertz Gold line behind four other people. The second person in line is complaining loudly to no one in particular how unbelievably bloody slow the line is. I don’t take this as a good sign. I pull out my book and finish the last four chapters. I have travel too much to let this get to me, plus I am too tired to care. I am told to make sure I check out the car before I leave the lot. I walk around the car and don’t notice anything until I open the door to get in and notice that the steering wheel is missing. I was going to walk back to tell them but since I lived in England for almost two and a half years I kind of remembered that the British like to put their steering wheels on the wrong side. I get in, take a deep breath and the head off to Slough where I am staying.

Yes, I have flown into London and have decided to stay in Slough. If you have never visited Slough, and really I can’t image why you would have, it is exactly as you think it is, based just on the name Slough. My room is not ready yet, of course. It is Sunday so there is not a lot to do around Slough. I decide to drive over to the Bracknell office with no intention of going into the office since I no longer have a badge that could get me in.  It is strangely comforting to drive to work. I remember the route well and driving in the fog around the “roundabouts” brought back old memories as if I had never left.

I park in the car park and then realize that there is not much more to do in Bracknell then there was in Slough. I sit in the car for ten minutes watch the light rain fall all around me and then decided to head back to Slough. My room is ready by then so I check in and take a shower saying a small pray of thanks to God for the warmth of the  water. I take a nap which they tell you not to do if you want to get over jet lag, but the heck with them. I wake up in a couple of hours and decide to go to the mall. I need an adapter so I can plug in my computer and wanted to get some dinner. I head over to the mall only to discover that it is very busy with Christmas shoppers this doesn’t bother me much, but a busy mall means a crowded car park. I have never been a very good driver. I am a licensed Californian driving instructor but only because the saying “Those that can’t, teach.” is absolutely true. Driving my midsize car around a crowded English car park is a recipe for disaster, each time I cranked the wheel hard over to the right the tires rub and it seemed as if I have developed a flat tire. I had to park at the very top of the car park and was extremely happy to be out of the car, so much so that I didn’t even check to see it one or more of the tires were flat.

I walked around the mall which even dressed up for Christmas was painfully austere. I found my adapter looked around for a restaurant and then decided to just call it quits and head back to the hotel. It was still early but nothing on the menu looked good. My English friends will confirm that I didn’t lose any weight while in Europe but I never did develop a taste for British food. I also could not bear going to any of my favourite restaurants without Cheryl. It is bad enough to go out to eat alone when travelling but to go to places that Cheryl and I fell in love with, alone was just too much.

I went to bed around 8:00 pm and slept until 7:00 am. Thank God that British TV only has four channels and one of them is always playing a Cricket game. I skipped breakfast and headed into Bracknell. I won’t bore everyone with how much pleasure I got from walking into the old office and seeing everyone, again. I didn’t understand how much I missed everyone until saw I them again.

I had a customer meeting which I played a surprisingly small role in, but it was still nice to meet with European customers again. The meeting lasted through lunch so I wasn’t able to get out with any of my old friends. I finished up the day by catching up on my voice mail and email. I honestly can not remember what I did for dinner that night so I guess I had a very good time. If the people I went out with would like to tell me what we did I would be happy to include it as an addendum to this travel log. Tuesday was a light day, a memorable lunch with Alison and more work in the Bracknell office. Most of the end of the day was trying to figure out how the heck I was going to get to appointments in London, Reading and then back to London. I of course had a car which in London is more a punishment than a mode of transportation. Chris Neal helped by printing out scores of directions, maps, routes and generally useless information. We worked and then abandoned multiple plans that would ensure that I would make it to my appointments. Knowing that there was no way that anything was going to work I decided to forget all about it and spent the last part of the day catching up with my old boss Juan Carlos. I headed back to the hotel to change and then out for dinner with Chris and his wife. I do remember that night clearly since I decided not to have anything to drink and the food at the restaurant was wonderful. I just remembered the missing night was spent in a traditional English pub which I have been to about 15 times in the past.

Even though I had gone there 15 times before, I of course got lost trying to find it spending about an hour and half on some very small farm roads all around Berkshire. I had a wonderful pub style meal, discussed how to save the world with Kevin and James and obviously had too much to drink. It did not bode well for my planned trip across London during rush hour.

Chris dropped me off at a very respectable hour and gave me his GPS with my morning route pre-programmed in to it. It included every detail from my hotel in Slough to the Hotel I would be staying at in London. The plan was too drop off my car and take the Underground to the customer’s site, all of it was pre-programmed into the GPS. Chris was very pleased and I was more than appreciative, even though we both knew that I was going to be hopelessly lost no matter what. The only good news was that my flight home wasn’t for another couple of days so I should be able to make it to the airport no matter how many appointments I missed. The GPS estimated that the trip  would take me about 45 minutes. The meeting was scheduled for 9:30 am; I left the hotel at 6:30 am. I will spare you all of the details since they are all kind of hazy anyways. The GPS only served as an instrument of torture since it mocked me at every turn. It seemed to delight in telling me where I should of turned or that that I should turn right on a road that was expressly built never to allow anyone to turn right. I cursed it, I screamed at it, and only because it was Chris’s did I not throw it out the window. I got within 4.37 miles of my destination a ridiculously accurate number when your lost. Of course 45 minutes later I was 11.36 miles away with no way of turning left, right or the obviously required “U-Turn.” I finally got turned around no longer in search of my hotel but just for some place to abandon my car so I could some how make it, by taxi, to the customer site.

I blindly wandered around until magically before me stood the Marriott Marble Arch. It was not my hotel nor was it close to either my hotel or the customer site. But it did have a car park and of course you can always get a taxi at a Marriott. I parked the car then asked them to get me a taxi. I badly mispronounced the address, leaving a confused look on the taxi driver's face and a feeling of deep concern in the pit of my stomach but it was out of my hands. I asked how long it would take and was told between 15 and 30 minutes depending on traffic. He then asked when I needed to arrive. I explained I was already 15 minutes late. Traffic of course was terrible, but I assumed that I would at least be able to apologize to the customer and then get to my next appointment.

Amanda was going through my presentation when I arrived but graciously allowed me to finish it after I apologized to the customer. I am sure my American accent and that I told them I tried to drive to my appointment in London explained it all, but they still listened to me assuming I must be smarter about Novell that I appeared.

Amanda took me to the Underground after the meeting and pointed me in the proper direction for my next meeting which of course was very close to where I started out the day that morning a mere 5 hours earlier. The next meeting went well with “Walker” the makers of fine Potato Chips, Crisps as they are called over here. We talked about how we could help them dominate the Crisps market. I got to slide 5 of my 128 slide presentation; it was still a pretty good meeting. We needed to get to our next appointment which was of course back in London not near our hotel nor near the hotel were I had parked my car but I didn’t expect it would be. We got to the hotel just in time to check in and then head out by taxi to the appointment.

We had dinner with BT which was very nice. The main topic of conversation was how stupid one has to be to drive a car in London followed by implausible but amusing stories of how to retrieve my car after drinking about 13 bottles of wine. The best plan to me seemed to be to get Juliet to take a taxi with me to the hotel, pick up my car and then navigate me back to our hotel. So here I am having helped drink 13 bottles of wine, now sitting in a mini cab at 2:00 am, driving around lost again in London. This time it is the taxi driver who is lost which I take as a very bad sign that Juliet and I will ever get back to our Hotel in time for our 9:00 am follow up meeting with BT. Juliet curses out the driver and basically tells him that he should be deported back to whatever God forsaken third world country he came from. I’m pretty sure he is not expecting a very big tip. He clinches the no tip deal by stopping at every hotel and some obviously closed department stores and saying “Here we are.” We would explain each time that we want to go to the Marriott Marble Arch. Juliet calls information and then the hotel and had to explain to the taxi driver how to get to the hotel. We get out of the taxi and the driver calls to me that this is not the Marriott Marble Arch, but of course it is and it is also the end of a perfect day. Or at least I thought it was the end of a perfect day. I suppose that the true end of the day was when I brushed my rental car against the wall on the way out of the Hotel car park.

The meeting four hours later with BT went pretty well, given that all of us are still pretty hung over. We do finish the meeting a little late. We have to run over to the Underground station and buy our tickets which will require us to transfer twice on the Underground to get to our train that will take us to our next meeting which is as far away from where I parked my freak’n rental car in downtown London as I can imagine.

The next meeting starts off a bit shaky since our partner has not provided them pricing that they requested because it was too high. The customer started the meeting by telling us that their strategic direction is to go to Microsoft servers and Active Directory. They pretend to listen politely but based on the questions and comments such as “I have received the same briefing from all of our vendors and don’t believe that Novell can deliver on this’ I am not sure we are going to win a big deal here. I am more amused then annoyed. We talk awhile trying to figure out what they really want to do. It takes longer that we expected but since I am in no hurry to get back on a train, recover my car, and drive around lost in London I am not concerned. The meeting ended with the customer agreeing that the best solution seemed to be to pay us half a million dollars and we would help them deliver on their real solution.

We finished this last meeting, then I was pointed again in the general direction of the hotel where my car was parked. I got back to the hotel, asked for directions, which I would of course not be able to follow, collected my car then drove around London trying as hard as possible to drive in the same direction which is quite impossible in London. Three hours later I found my way to the M1 motorway which if you know London is not the motorway that you want when you want to go to Gatwick, but it is a major motorway. Once on a major motorway it is not that hard, even for me, to find one of the two major airports.

I was able get the car back to the airport and rather park at the Hotel I dropped it off that night and took the shuttle to my last hotel in England. I got to my hotel that night and honestly thanked God that the whole bloody mess was over.

Of course I still have the trip to the airport and two long flights back to Utah. I will not bore you anymore about that in this travel log so I suppose this is the end.