Crazy work trip

I travel about once a month for work.  Sometimes I’m flying to Houston to the corporate office and other times I’m flying to Utah to the field.  It can get exhausting to travel, but it’s also nice to have a change in work schedule.  As long as it’s not traveling more than once a month, I can handle it.

I just got back from Utah.  This time I flew into a teeny tiny town, Vernal instead of Salt Lake City (which then requires a 2.5 hour drive).  This trip was the craziest experience I’ve had and I can’t even go into all of the details due to proprietary information. 

At any rate I can talk about the arrival experience.  We traveled on Great Lakes Airlines, which is a tiny service that flies out of the very end of concourse A at DIA.  It’s so far to the end you start to wonder if you are even still in DIA.

We have to walk outside, walk up the stairs to the plane and get on a teeny tiny propeller plane that seats about 12 people.  Despite having assigned seats, they tell us to move around to ‘even out the weight’.  The pilot is also the flight attendant.  Awesome.

All seats are windows seats and as the plane was feeling like it was going to tumble down the runway, rather than actually take off the guy next to me starts a conversation.  Not so great…I get pretty bad motion sickness and with the crazy turbulence and super bumpy flight I could barely concentrate on not getting sick and this guy just wanted to TALK.

He is from Houston and obviously works in the same industry as me, because, really why else would you fly to Vernal, UT unless you were going for work?  So he starts in asking me what I do and what company I work for and why I’m going to Vernal.  And of course he tells me all about himself, even though I didn’t ask (because I really didn’t care).  Then he notices my ring (thank goodness I just got it back from the jeweler, because I really wasn’t in the mood to be hit on at that point) and asks what my husband does.  I tell him he’s a stay at home dad, and he says, ‘Oh, so roles are really reversed.’  Sure.  Something like that.

Then he starts talking about how he has had to fly all over the world to fix different equipment and by fix he explained that he had to tell the workers to fill their gas tank, read their gauges, or turn a few switches and levers.  He also tells me that he brings is 45 with him everywhere.

I’m sorry, did this conversation just take a very strange turn?  Yep, he’s clearly from TX and we are clearly flying to the middle of nowhere.  And how exactly does he get his gun on the plane????

He proceeds to tell me that you just don’t know who you’ll run into in these small towns.  One time he was in Shreveport (yeah, I’m with you, I had no idea that was a small town) and this BIG BLACK (his emphasis, not mine) guy approached him asking for money.  And he told the guy he didn’t have any and asked him to leave him alone.  The guy persisted, so he whipped out his GUN and told they guy very firmly that he didn’t have any and to back away.

>?%>@<M!><>#%^??!!!

On what planet do we live that it is okay to threaten a homeless man asking for money with a GUN?????!??!?!  Really?!?!?  I’d like to see him explain that to a jury.  I  killed him because he wouldn’t quit asking me for money.

My response?  Um, okay, well I’m going to try to get some sleep now.

So now it’s been 1.5 hours into my crazy work trip.

We land and again walk down the stairs of the plane and then into the airport.  Which was smaller than the main floor of my house.  Not even kidding.  We have to get our bags from baggage claim.  Which is really quite funny considering I just walked next to by bag coming into the airport as the baggage handler wheeled the bags into the airport.

We have to check in at the Enterprise desk to get our car.  Except there isn’t anyone around to ask.  The airline people are busy with the plane and finally we see the TSA guy.  We ask him where the Enterprise representative is and he says, ‘He’s in a meeting’.  Okay, so when exactly will he be back from his meeting?  ‘Oh, he won’t be back today, he’s in the meeting all day.’  So how do we get the car we reserved?  ‘Not sure.  Sometimes the airline people can help you.  They should be done soon with the plane.’

Okay then, we’ll just wait.  About 15 min later the airline gal slaps our contract and keys down, asks us to sign and we can be on our way.  I sign on the many dotted lines and turn around to see another guy carrying a bag with the company logo on it.  My direct report and I ask him what he does and why he’s in Vernal.

He came for a weed conference.  LOLOLOLOLOLOL.  Really??  He was quick to explain that it was the dandelion kind of weed.  So there are weed conferences and teeny tiny Vernal is the place to have a conference?  Did you know there are weed managers?  Seriously. 

At any rate our coworker needs a ride to his airport, because there are no taxis or shuttles.  We go out to our car and find a very big white Dodge Ram.  It was quite funny to throw our stuff in the bed of the truck and jump in with me driving this huge truck.  It was even funnier to come back later that night to pick up my boss with me driving the big white truck.  The look on his face was priceless.

I REALLY wish I could talk about the rest of the trip because it only got crazier.  It ended with me agreeing to bring whale blubber with me the next time I was in town.  Definitely the craziest, most bizarre work trip ever.