Business Travel

It has been a long time since I had to arrange a group trip. More than a decade, I think. The last big intercontinental goat-rope in which I got to ride was one that included Tokyo , Shanghai , Seoul , Honolulu and Anchorage .

I knew that one was my last, unless something awful happened, like I was elected to Congress, so I took extensive notes. I was not the action officer, the one who has investigated all the options, arranged the hotels, talked to the Embassies, got the visas and the airline tickets.

The one on that trip was a gem. A real pro. She had relieved me in the assignment, and she was much better at it than I was. She performed flawlessly and with aplomb. But still there was one of those travel moments that paralyzes the gut and makes sweat bead from the forehead.

Wrong airport.

Shanghai has two of them, just like Washington , and we were at the wrong one. It happens here all the time, but there is nothing more embarrassing, particularly with someone important, or self-important, looking at you like you had just grown a dunce cap and begun to drool.

So there we were, on the other side of the biggest megalopolis in China with an hour to go to until our scheduled flight was wheels-in-the-well and outward bound for Seoul .

In the great scheme of things, an extra day in Shanghai would not have mattered nearly as much as splattering ourselves along a Chinese highway, but we endeavored to do so, shouting encouragement to the gallant Cantonese driver from the Consulate who had foolishly lingered at the curb as we discovered our error.

We rushed him en masse, hurling our bags into the back of the van, shouting that we had to be at the other airport, muy Pronto!

His skilled driving saved our bacon on that one, and as I found myself lurching into this last week, I discovered that I am a travel agent again. I had risen to the point in life that people actually were paid to take care of me, and that is a near fatal condition. You lose your edge.

They say Eisenhower forgot how to drive, and George Bush The Elder was amazed at the bar-scanner at a cash register when he first saw one.

So it is to be expected that there are a lot of details I forgot when I stopped having to do the detailed planning myself. And it occurred to me that perhaps that is the reason why marriages sometimes seem to go bad at that stage in life. The one spouse is all puffed up and self-important, and the other able to see the feet of clay on the edifice.

I actually had a dream about the latter in the too-soft mattress at the Hanover Marriott Hotel around two this morning, and about the former, as a disaster begin to unfold in a dreamlike state at the curb of the hotel.

I would never have rented a Ford F-150 pick-up truck to navigate the old colonial-era roads of the Garden State . That would be madness, but the whole thing started with the train, and that is precisely where it all began to come off the tracks. So to speak.

Amtrak is only starting to put the high-speed trains back in service as they fix the brake failure problem. That is a good thing, and since the old trains go just as fast on the rickety rails, it is only in the creature comforts that the sleek new cars have any advantage.

What with the hassle of security, it just doesn’t take any more time to ride the rails than it does to fly. And it there is a storm and get stuck on the runway, it can take a lot longer.

Plus, there actually is a place you can hire a car in Newark , just across Raymond Street from the Pennsylvania Station. I like the bums and the hookers there, and the cops and the feeling of being actually connected to a city I get from taking the train. Even if the city is a run-down disaster, or maybe it is because it is.

I thought it would be a novelty for the customers, something memorable.

It was.

I had called and made a reservation for a full-sized sedan, thinking I would be chauffeuring a couple or three people on the triangle from crumbling Newark out to the two lab complexes and the hotel. I had a pretty good lead on a Marriott that was supposed to be pleasant, and that was my plan.

There were five of us, as it turned out, and it would be cramped but bearable. Until Jorge, the personable young Jerseyan with the jet black hair and intense dark eyes told me that the company had swapped out the full sized cars and replaced them with econoboxes.

I’d tell you the name of the rental company, but my attorneys have advised me not to.

I looked at Jorge in amazement and gestured at the four men waiting outside with their bags.

“So where am I supposed to put these guys?” I asked plaintively.

The young man furrowed his brow, and only a half hour later an enormous Ford F-150 crew-cab truck rumbled into the horse-shoe drive across from the station. The thing was gigantic. I needed a stepladder to get into it.

“We can just throw the bags in the bed,” I said hopefully, thinking it did not look like rain. The customers agreed, and we piled up into the cab. Everyone fit, and if I felt a little remote up there in the sky, fenders so far away that they might have been in other zip-codes, life was OK. Jersey drivers periodically tried to insert themselves under my wheels.

The customers were pretty amazed at Newark . I have grown accustomed to it, and it is fun to become sensitized to the urban spectacle to it again through new eyes.

We navigated by satellite pictures to the Labs and the afternoon session went well. We managed to find the hotel on Route 10 after that, making only one wrong turn and venturing into New Jersey Left Turn Hell. But it was OK, and I pulled the vast truck up in front of the Marriott entrance without further incident.

The restaurant looked good, but it wasn’t, but the point was the conversation. The customers like business travel, since it is an excuse to get away from Washington , and I escaped early. The younger customers closed down the bar a couple hours before I arose to discover that the other Lab where we were supposed to visit that morning had been reading the agenda I had typed without proof-reading, and was alert and ready for us at 7:30.

They called while I was getting out of the shower, and I heard ominous violins somewhere in the background. Things started to go high and to the right from there.

I got dressed and realized I had forgotten to pack my razor. I decided the Don Johnson Miami Vice look was going to have to do, and walked out to the remote area of the parking lot where I had anchored the truck, and brought it up to the entrance. It had rained but had stopped. The truck took up most of the drop-off area, but that was all right. I didn’t mind making a statement with the thing.

I left it there with the engine running and collected the party inside. We threw the bags in the bed and I was just climbing up into the cab when a scrawny bellman with a sharp voice said “You got a flat, buddy.”

A what ? I have not had a flat tire in years. I looked down at the front left corner of the vehicle, and sure enough, it was on the rim. Dead flat. New tire, too, by the look. I wondered how many miles I could drive on it like that and the answer was maybe four, and that would shred the tire and the wheel.

I looked down at my crisp shirt, and my nice dress slacks and highly-shined polished shoes and the rainbow of the oil sheen on the puddles of water on the drive.

Shit.

I called the rental place, like they could do anything about it, and sighed. They recommended Roadside Assistance, which could be out to the hotel in a couple hours. Sometimes a man has to do what a man has to do, and the five of us conducted one of those intimately male things, wrestling the bags out of the bed and dropping the tailgate and beginning a Chinese fire drill.

One of the Customers actually found the instruction manual for the truck in the glove-box, and although it is against my better nature, we found out where the jack was, and the recommended point to place it under the frame, and the details on how to lower the winching mechanism on the gigantic spare tire.

That required the extended three-piece jack handle to reach under the frame and release the spare from its cunning hiding place under the bed. Thank God I had a more junior associate with me who actually did the work. He was covered with oil and grease and it was over the keypad on my cell phone, which I kept dialing to the Lab to tell them the Vice President did not have to wait in the lobby since we were going to be late. Like, way late.

All I could get was voicemail, but by the time we washed up in the men’s room off the bar and rolled apprehensively down Route 10 toward the campus, I figured we had weathered the worst of it.

I successfully located the rolling campus as it started to rain again. I let out the anchor chain on the truck in the visitor’s lot in front of the main entrance to the Government Lab. I could see the Vice President in the lobby, looking at his watch. We moved all the bags from the bed into the cab so they would not get wet, and we headed in a little gaggle toward the big glass doors.

My associate was still a little winded from having to lift the truck by himself, and his briefcase had been moved from into the cab and he needed it. He had to check his airline ticket, since he would be splitting off from the briefing in the mid-morning to go to the airport and make an important previous commitment in Virginia Beach .

I tossed him the keys, thanking the Lord that he had been with me. He had really saved the trip by throwing himself into the tire-change. Then I turned to make the introductions in the lobby.

I have to thank the professionalism of everyone involved. The Vice President was gracious, and the scientists who were patiently waiting in the conference room were wonderful, and the administrative people who un-scrambled the various access levels so that we knew what we could talk about, and to whom.

I must say that particular kudos should go to Miriam, the normally imperious secretary who only blinked twice when one of the customers announced that he had not seen a Starbucks on the way over, and since he did not drink regular drip coffee, a double-shot mocha latte was the way he liked to start the day, if it wasn’t too much trouble.

Miriam made it happen, though I suspect I am going to pay for it in more ways than one. Based on the amount of time we had lost, the program was fast and furious. Fascinating stuff being done in the laboratory, and the customers were very interested. I was taking wild notes for follow-up action, and I barely looked up when my associate leaned over and said he had to take off. He had a cab waiting out front.

“I really owe, you, man. Thanks for your help on that tire thing,” I whispered.

“No sweat. Take it easy going back. Just make sure you get the early train. The senior customer’s wedding anniversary is tonight and he doesn’t want to be late.”

“No shit,” I thought, as he got up and left the vault. That ratcheted up the stress level a little. I looked at my watch and made a little helicopter sign with my index finger. Hurry it up, I thought. We need to cover everything. Then I turned back to my notes, listening hard. I copied down a key comment from the customers. I had another lead to follow up on a new technology.

We had to leave to make the train just as lunch arrived on a cart. I had paid for it on my company card, and I suggested we just grab some sandwiches and munch them on the way back to the city. I wanted to make sure we made the train.

There were thanks and vows of future business, and the long walk back down to the lobby and a final heart-felt farewell. I breathed my thanks to the Vice President, and asked him to thank all the people I had inconvenienced.

He told me it was all OK, just part of a day’s work at the Labs. He waved and then walked back past the security desk and the four of us were alone once more. As we emerged from the revolving door, I saw that we were right under a torrent of a thunderstorm and there were no umbrellas.

I reached in my pocket for the remote opener for the truck, wondering if I should make a solitary dash across the parking lot to the truck, and keep the customers from getting soaked.

Then I realized that staying dry was about the least of my problems. There was nothing in my pockets except my lighter, since the keys were with my associate, safely on their way to Virginia Beach .

Copyright 2005 Vic Socotra

www.vicsocotra.com

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