Friday, January 2, 2009

Business Travel

Usually, my business travel deals with taking trips to local state parks, and the occasional 3-hour drive to Utah's infamous national parks.  Oh yeah, and there's the weekly winter trip up to Sundance.  But I had quite the unusual assignment just a few weeks ago.  I had the glorious experience to fly to Las Vegas--in December, mind you--to enjoy it's wonderfully warm, sunny weather...in the airport.

Yep, that's right.  I grabbed a plane from SLC, flew to Vegas, quickly grabbed dinner at the Quizno's in the slot-machine loaded airport, before I met up at the Delta ticketing counter with a new girl my work was admitting to our program.  And, all by myself.  I was a bit worried that I didn't know her background issues when special security decided to do a pat-down check.  Luckily, she acted like a normal person and didn't flip out in tantrums or ninja moves, and I could rest assured for the rest of our journey.  Granola bars, fruit snacks, crayons, and picture books filled the rest of our slightly-over-an-hour-flight back to SLC.

From 11:00 pm to midnight our drive to Springville was serenaded by Christmas carols over the radio waves in my luxurious company car, a 2001 Chevy Impala (with the "low tire pressure" warning light blinking the whole way).  I checked her in with night staff as the rest of the girls' cottage slumbered away, and returned home at 1:00 am.  

It was quite the interesting trip, just never lending itself to much tourism or site-seeing.  No wonder businessmen never like to travel for work.  Luckily, my next trip to Vegas will be for Ultimate Frisbee with Utopia.  All play, and no work.