So Sunday I travelled from California to Washington DC in preparation for the OMG-ISE–NIEM government standards meeting and bbc2010 rules / process / analyst conference. This took a whole day and a whole load of emotional energy. So what went wrong? Lets look at my emotional scorecard versus the day’s events:
-30 = Only the 1st flight of the day is available. That means a 4am start. Dang.
+10 = Early on-line check-in snags me an aisle seat…
-10 = …but its on an older 777 whose inside baggage bins aren’t big enough for end-on wheely bags of the sort everyone uses in the US. And I’m in the last boarding group…
+10 = … but luckily my smaller bag finds a space fine. Great!
-5 = Watch “Dinner for Schmucks” on board and lose a couple of million brain cells doing so.
-20 = It takes 80 minutes to get checked bags onto the carousel at Dulles. No wonder most people use large carry-on bags.
-30 = The car rental company seems to have screwed up their computers – I wait another 80 minutes to be served. Despite the huge queue the staff still insist on the usual time-consuming upsell / cross-sell patter. No, thankyou, I don’t need a satnav and no I don’t want a (largish, odd) hybrid!
-15 = My disdain at the attempts to sell me a satnav in a rental car has gone and given my own satnav the gremlins, it seems. It is insisting my journey downtown is a whole 2350 miles and in a Westerly direction. .It seems to be confusing Washington in California with the city of the same name in the District of Columbia. Back to the Mark 1 Eyeball and roadsigns, I guess.
-10 = So everyone from DC is heading home on Hwy 66 tonight. The car in front of me dies and pulls over. Eventually I end up downtown looking for my hotel. I eventually get to my room at 7pm.
Overall score: -100. Ah, the joy of travel, and what a way to spend a Sunday. I feel for everyone who has to put up with this stuff every week.
