Racing the flight attendants

You remember the movie “Outbreak.” And surely you remember Patrick Dempsey’s role as the hapless slacker who jacks a monkey from some port warehouse. And you certainly cannot forget his performance as “sick dude on a plane.” That’s me right now. Sleepless and bordering on ill as we fly over Flagstaff, Arizona. My in-flight map tells me we’re landing in 41 minutes. If I don’t die before then, I’ll probably be okay.

After pretending I was dying for a couple of hours of flying, I gave up on both the sleeping and the dying, watched Tiger audition for “The Young and the Restless” (I think he’ll get the part), and then took care of some business (do you know it’s possible to do domain transfers at 30,000 feet?). And now I’ve got just a couple of minutes before the over-nice flight attendants come in and tell me to shut down the machine.

If you’ve read this far, you have probably guessed that I’m on a plane. You’d be right. I’m enjoying an upgrade, bouncing my head to the last Phish show I saw, and on my way back to Las Vegas. This is a week-long work trip that carries with it some pretty heavy responsibility and a lot of hours on the job. No complaints, though, as I have a good crew joining me, the flight is only four hours, and I don’t have to do any currency exchanges.

There are only so many ways you can tell your family goodbye before they start to look like they are watching a re-run of Law & Order. They’re just waiting for the bum-bum noise and for Lennie to crack wise about the corpse. This time my wife just nodded and slipped into what she calls “Solo Mode.” The older kid pretended to be sad and then asked me to bring him a toy. The baby threw up a little.

That’s a long way of saying, I’m back on the road after a short break. It’s not a story anymore. It just is. I’m counting on something interesting happening while I’m gone (and counting on that something interesting not being something that will make me insane–again).

With the Grand Canyon on my right and a world of possibilities ahead, it’s time to turn off all electric devices. So, as they are screaming in my headphones…”Let’s get down to the nitty gritty. Let’s get this show on the road.”