Surviving Travels with Bill
You would think that traveling with a guy that has done training all his life, a certified road warrior, would be as smooth as your first business trip could get.
First things first. This week I had to travel to LA (also known as hell-LA) to train people on our scripting technology. It all sounds good right? Spend three days in sunny California, hanging out in The Hills with all the beautiful people at a cool company (more about the cool company later).
We got here on Wednesday morning and I should have known right away that something was up when Bill told me that he’d arranged the rental car through Dollar but that in the future I should never do that because saving a couple of bucks was not worth the risk. The proper thing would have been to rent from one of the bigger ones like Hertz or Avis. But he assured me that nothing would happen and everything would be fine.
At this point I feel compelled to give a piece of advice - Don’t trust your destiny to a guy who can’t find the shuttle stop that is right in front of him.
We got to the rental car place and the first thing the guy behind the desk tells us is that our reservation was for the day before we arrived…hmm…No worries we can still get a car, only it’s going to cost us $50 a day for a full size car (which is what it would have been at the other places, so our ’savings’ went out the window). Staying positive we figured we’re still doing OK because we’re going to have a full size car…but oh no. I’m sorry but I don’t know in whose world a PT Junker I mean Cruiser can be categorized as a full size. The car was not only ugly and small, we quickly found out it had at most 10 hp if that many.
It did get us to our hotel where we parked it for the night. The hotel was quite nice and I must add that Bill did get us into the Admirals Club lounge at the airport, which, if you’ve never been, you’ve no idea what you’re missing out on.
After the whole car acquiring debacle the rest of Wednesday was pretty good. We met my parents for dinner and later I hung out with them in my fancy hotel room. I had a suite with my own little living room, a 50 inch tele and a loft style bedroom.
Thursday morning we get going early to make sure we make it to the place on time. We were in the fourth lane of a six lane boulevard waiting for the green light when the car - the same car we did not like, the same car from the shady rental place, the same car that had no hp - died. So we found ourselves stuck there with a car that won’t start in LA rush hour traffic. Bill suggested I turn off the car and let it ‘rest’ for a bit because I might have flooded the engine. Now I might be wrong, but don’t you have to have a carburetor in order for the engine to flood?
Our savior was a guy that came out of nowhere and took it upon himself to help us push the car and get cars to let us cut across all the lanes and onto a driveway. No sooner had we gotten the car off the road when I hear Bill say ‘seeya’ and run off to find a cab. Four hours and several phone calls later I got a new car – another PT Junker – and I was off to work… that was yet another adventure because it turns out that Bill had put in the wrong address into the GPS. When I finally made it to our destination I found Bill alone in a conference room. His subjects had gone to lunch. Problem was, they never came back! So we spent the remainder of the afternoon hanging out by ourselves.
The evening was cool since I got to go to the LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) to see a Dali Painting and Film exhibit that was quite nice. I have a personal obsession with Dali so it was great to get to see some of his most famous paintings like ‘The Persistence of Memory’. I went by myself because Bill was not into it, which is just as well since he went to bed at 7 pm every night.
Friday we had no car troubles and we even made it to our destination on time. I thought that Bill’s presentation from the day before must have been way too boring and that’s why people didn’t come back but it surely wouldn’t happen to me. Well, either I was equally boring or This large social networking site is really a crazy place to work for and people have no time to sit still for five minutes. We spent what can be considered all day with two people in the room: Bill and me.
This trip was supposed to happen about 6 months ago but for different reasons it had not happened. It seems they are so crazy busy that the night before we were supposed to meet with them we weren’t sure anyone would come to work with us since we’d received no confirmation or acknowledgement from them. One of my co-workers put it best when he described the company as ‘a bunch of 20 year olds running around with too much money and no adult supervision’. All in all they were very nice and it was fun to see their world and the craziness they have to deal with on a daily basis.
I’ve learned a few lessons from this experience:
- Don’t let Bill make the car rental arrangenments
- Don’t let Bill drive – no matter what
- Don’t let Bill set up the GPS
In general if it has to do with sense of direction in any way, make sure it’s not Bill’s sense of direction you are following.
Now I find myself relaxing at the Admirals Club in LAX enjoying a beer and waiting for the red-eye back to Boston. Listening to Bran Van 3000’s ‘Drinking in L.A.’ which describes perfectly how I’m felling about this whole trip.
Can’t wait to see what happens when I travel with Señor Stephen.
How do you train a newbie road warrior?
One of the joys of the seasoned traveler is helping the newbies learn the tricks of the trade. As such a seasoned traveler I saw the need for young obi wan lopez to learn about the forces. You can tell him there is a darkside but youthful exuberance can not feel the farces (not a mispelling) that the seasoned traveler can expect.
To create a true learning experince I created a perfect lab environment. Painless air travel with Airport Luxury Lounge, Hotel room upgrade with two floors, microwave and refrigerator, and about 15 minutes from the training site. The conditiona at a training site are always beyond experimental control but almost everything else was in place. The one area I used to train him was the rental car.
Dollar had promised a “cheap” rental charge and an upgrade to a “hot” charger. Yes, I hear the experienced travelers laughing now but how else to train a newbie? I even warned him that this was never a good idea but he needed the taste of combat.
Sure enough, the sobering experience of reneged promises and the shock of seeing a PT Cruiser rather than a cool LA style car brought him to earth. I saw his excitement turn into seasoned whining and was secretly proud.
To make the experience complete, the breakdown he reports did occur. What was not reported was I also pushed the car with the savior who came by to help us. Now there was a reason to my madness. Let’s see, he is in his twenties, I am a few … years older. He is in great shape, I have a great oval shape. Why would I, the senior traveler and mentor in this experience push the car? I was not going to face his wife if someone smashed into the car from behind while we pushed. My wife has long understood my samurai like dedication, his wife just had a child and would not be amused.
Once there what else could I do to help him understand travel? I explained the customer comes first and left him with the car, to truly plump the depths of the experience with dark rental companies. Now understand that this required trust on my part, the car was under my name. But I had to believe he had learned something and I reluctantly left him there alone, flagged a cab, and got to my class on time.
Many of the points he complained about were part of the process. Teach him to trust no one, have him learn to find and correct mistakes, and show him that pure logic has no place with travel arrangements and expectations.
The seasoned traveler and husband also knows: have everyone believe you can do nothing. This guarantees much less gets put on your platter out of fear. My wife has not let me rent a chainsaw for years.
I have already planned the next experience, we need to line up a deeper, darker training experience. I think we’ll go with Motel 8 and JetBlue. I think he is ready, we’ll sign up and then I’ll have to find an excuse to let him solo. It will be a proud joy to listen to his experiences.
Comment by Bill Scerra — October 29, 2007 @ 5:18 am