This post is part of a series in which LinkedIn Influencers and members share their business travel advice and stories from life on the road.Read all the posts here.
Feathers were everywhere. It was the end of a bad day. Some days when I travel, I feel like I move under a black cloud. It stays with me like white on rice. This was the case on this cold winter day, as I put my down coat into a bucket to travel through the security checkpoint after a long flight from India. Much to my chagrin, the coat sleeve got caught in the roller, ripping the coat, and releasing feathers that seemed to go everywhere. Airborne, they slowly fell to the earth as the gravity of the situation hit me. It had been a long day. I had started the trip in Bangalore, India. I had been traveling 22 hours. I was tired and dirty and cranky.
The security guard apologized effusively, and handed me some orange tape to repair the rip in my coat. So, I placed two wide pieces of orange tape on my coat and started to move forward to my next flight. The tape formed a large, bright-orange X that was unmistakably the mark of a bad day. I was clearly now a target. It was time to get a move on through terminal E, and on to terminal T, for my flight to San Francisco. It was sad, but laughable.
As I lifted my laptop onto my shoulder, I thought about all of my tribulations on this trip. I had arrived at the terminal in India too early, in the wrong time zone, and needed a place to take a nap. So, in a corner of the terminal, I had crawled up into a ball and eagerly looked for the time to arrive for my flight. The flight time came ever so slowly, and I learned a hard lesson about Indian time zones.
On my flight, the well-intended stewardess had served me a Diet Coke. However, as she reached for my table, the plane hit some turbulence and the soda cascaded all over the keyboard of my laptop. My face puckered up with a sour look, but the guy beside me said no worries, that he would fix it. He then proceeded to pick up my laptop and swing it over his head like a lasso trying to shake out the liquid. He then turned it on, and I slowly watched my PC trying to fire up (somewhere between Turkey and Frankfurt) like a sick set of LED lights slowly fading into the night. My heart sank.
I had work to do, and I love a long flight to sit and slowly write to pass the time. It is a treat for me to not be bombarded by media, phones and interruptions, but I could not work. My sick, wet laptop sat alone in its case. My fingers wanted to type. My brain was whirring, but I was confined to a seat for more than 12 hours, unable to do what I wanted to do. It was agony.
The lady in front of me pushed her seat back into my face leaving little room between my TV screen and my unhappy physiognomy. I was confined to this seat for 10 more hours with little room to move or work.
Then, as we moved over Nova Scotia, the plane descended rapidly, and we got to wear those horrible masks that we usually ignore in the safety videos they show before we take off. Somehow, this mask made it all seem better. I was still alive. The laptop was dead, I was exhausted, and I couldn’t believe the audacity of the lady in front of me for putting her seat back in such a tight space. But, as I touched the mask to my face, and thanked Heaven to be alive, I had perspective.
So, the rip in my coat was just the icing on a bad day. X marked the spot for an unhappy, but safe traveler.
Photo: Author's Own
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