#4 ~ Planes, Trains and Automobiles….and trees

January 18, 2010 at 4:33 am · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged My Life, The 'Project'

I’m thoroughly convinced that some things happen just so I can blog about it…because who misses a flight, narrowly avoids being run over by a train (well, not really, but it sounds fabulously dramatic), gets hit by a tree and then is crowned “the most interesting people I’ve ever met” all within 46 hours? Yours truly.

You’ll have to read the last entry to understand how completely excited I was to get out of town. (Catch yourself up now if you haven’t already done so…it will only take 3 minutes and there’s no homework involved, I promise.) You’d expect some awesome butterflies in the tummy and some excitement jitters, but add to the mix realizing you forgot your wallet at home as you arrive to the airport and you get one mad herd of buffalo stampeding from your esophagus all the way through your large intestines.

Yup, I’m the genius who changed purses 5 minutes before leaving the house which resulted in my wallet sitting on the kitchen counter. Oh and don’t get me started on printing out your boarding pass the night before…that was done, but that’s another story. And in case you’re wondering, I did think of the airport scene from Dumb & Dumber when Jim Carrey yells out, “Move it or lose it, Sister!” while trampling innocent bystanders when I thought I still had hope of making the flight after my wallet was retrieved. Although tempted, I refrained from duplicating it.

Now on to the ‘trains’ portion of the blog entry: Lesson #1 – Do not listen to Melody. Well, wait…listen to Melody, but don’t listen to her if she screams out “JAYWALK!”

The stage: Nice Italian restaurant.
The cast: Five 30-something gorgeous (heh heh) women.
The scene: The stunning ladies must leave dining establishment at a rabbit’s pace, catch train type transit ASAP to make it back to hotel to catch the shuttle (automobile portion of the story) in order to make it to the airport in time for departing flight…

YES, I thought that we could safely jaywalk in order to catch the train that had already arrived across the street. YES, I was wrong. NO, we weren’t hit by moving vehicles. YES, there did happen to be an officer RIGHT IN FRONT OF US as we jaywalked. YES, I plead guilty to being an idiot, not being ‘from here’ and apologized profusely. YES, there was another train heading in the opposite direction (which was already stopped) that honked at us for what seemed to be hours. YES, the train driver shook his head a gazillion times at us. YES, the fine officer let us go after the train safely passed by.  NO, he did not give us the $500 ticket he said he could have issued. YES, after it was all over we laughed about it while I made a mental note not to tell my daughter of the story until after her teenage years.

Now the ‘tree’ … The climate was quite chilly, in fact, cold enough to freeze our eyeballs. We  laughed about previous train incident and praised the Lord for still being alive. While walking quickly, as to not become human popsicles, one of us walked her six foot self into a tree branch. Everyone else passed under gracefully, completely oblivious to the fact that a tree even stood there. These types of things happen when you’re tall. Just sayin’.

We made it back to the hotel and were greeted by our kind young gentleman driver who was waiting for us. After piling in the van, we immediately jibber jabbered enough to cause a complete stranger to not only chuckle consistently, but most likely cast judgment upon our sanity. A couple jokes were shouted from the back as well as an immediate, “I hope you weren’t offended by that,” to the driver, in which he replied, “Not at all…I might use that one, if ya don’t mind!”

As we approached the airport I just had to ask, “So, were we the most interesting crew you’ve driven today?”

He once again chuckled then crowned us with, “You’re the most interesting group of people I’ve ever met!”

Of course, I took this as a complement. (By the way, hello Chris! — It’s not a shocker that I gave him the web address to the blog. Let’s just see if he visits.)

So, I missed the flight and caught the next, but that still resulted in a missed tour of the facility with VP. I did have a productive conference call with him and Mr. Pres.  I now have my homework for the week. I’ll be blogging about what I can. This whole ‘keeping it secret’ thing is way harder for me than it is you, trust me.

This project is SO big and every now and then I feel so small…despite the fact that I’m tall enough to walk into tree branches.

photo by cflart

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©2010 Melody G. Fritchley

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