Friday, January 23, 2004
Visiting Virginia
My trip to Virginia started on Monday afternoon. There I sat eating and playing video games until the final second of time possible. My flight was at 3:45 and I completely skipped on when I was supposed to leave town and head for the airport. So I finally get out of Saratoga with not very much time at all to catch my flight. I bust. I get to the airport in record time, 25 minutes, thinking that I'm definately going to miss this flight and I may as well get ready to fork over a couple hundred bucks to fix the situation. I arrive, check in, and go through security. Damn it. I completely forgot about the leatherman that was on my keychain. Crap. I come to the gate to find that my flight was delayed about 10 minutes or so. Okay. Good deal. I board and fly and switch planes in Philly and board and fly. Then we arrive in Richmond, VA. I get my bag and pick up the rental car. They gave me a Jeep Wrangler which I think is funny cause I'd never buy one of these cars ever. So I hop in, make my phone calls and then look at my directions.. Easy enough.
I drive out of the airport and become immediately lost. I pull over on some side road to review the directions. A cop stops. I tell him what I am trying to do and he's never heard of Crewe, Virginia, the town that I need to drive to now. I know in my head its roughly 45 minutes southwest of the city of Richmond and I know I need to find route 360 to get there. The cop gives me some directions that didn't make any sense and I some how find my way to route 95. I take it north and then see a sign that says route 360 on it. Okay. Even though the directions I had gave me seven or eight different roads, if thats 360 I'll take it. So do I do and then find myself driving through downtown Richmond. I lose 360 somewhere in here, but manage to find my way back to it. Burkeville: 45 miles. My hotel is in Burkeville. Great. I am going the right way. I drive and drive and drive. Oh yeah I am hungry. I skip past all the restaurants and shops and keep driving. Pretty soon it becomes dark. Very dark. I drive and drive and drive. Finally I come to Burkeville and I don't know exactly where the hotel is, but I take a left and drive through downtown Burkeville. Ghost town. Nothing. I see some lights and think that maybe my hotel is over there so I head in that direction and find it right off the road I was on, had I stayed on it for a few more seconds. Great. I check in to my new home, the unComfort Inn and unwind. I need to go find food. So I drive out and get my barrings straightened out again. I find where I need to go the following day, so that's all taken care of. Nothing is open but a gas station so I buy some jerky, doritos, and water. Great dinner, right? I go to sleep.
I won't bore you with the exciting details of my installation and training so I will skip over that part of the story and just wrap this up. I drove 20 miles to civilization Tuesday night to find a place to eat. I ate at Applebees. The visit to the client went super well and I even got out of there a little ahead of schedule. They gave me better directions to the airport and I got to their way ahead of schedule. I got bumped up to an earlier flight and the guy was like, "I'm supposed to charge you 25 bucks for that, but I'm not going to".. Cool.
I guess thats it, other than I know my way around Philly airport really good now. The rural areas of Virginia are really nice and really rural. The people who work at power companys are people too. It's good to be number 1. ¶ 1/23/2004 11:00:00 AM
I drive out of the airport and become immediately lost. I pull over on some side road to review the directions. A cop stops. I tell him what I am trying to do and he's never heard of Crewe, Virginia, the town that I need to drive to now. I know in my head its roughly 45 minutes southwest of the city of Richmond and I know I need to find route 360 to get there. The cop gives me some directions that didn't make any sense and I some how find my way to route 95. I take it north and then see a sign that says route 360 on it. Okay. Even though the directions I had gave me seven or eight different roads, if thats 360 I'll take it. So do I do and then find myself driving through downtown Richmond. I lose 360 somewhere in here, but manage to find my way back to it. Burkeville: 45 miles. My hotel is in Burkeville. Great. I am going the right way. I drive and drive and drive. Oh yeah I am hungry. I skip past all the restaurants and shops and keep driving. Pretty soon it becomes dark. Very dark. I drive and drive and drive. Finally I come to Burkeville and I don't know exactly where the hotel is, but I take a left and drive through downtown Burkeville. Ghost town. Nothing. I see some lights and think that maybe my hotel is over there so I head in that direction and find it right off the road I was on, had I stayed on it for a few more seconds. Great. I check in to my new home, the unComfort Inn and unwind. I need to go find food. So I drive out and get my barrings straightened out again. I find where I need to go the following day, so that's all taken care of. Nothing is open but a gas station so I buy some jerky, doritos, and water. Great dinner, right? I go to sleep.
I won't bore you with the exciting details of my installation and training so I will skip over that part of the story and just wrap this up. I drove 20 miles to civilization Tuesday night to find a place to eat. I ate at Applebees. The visit to the client went super well and I even got out of there a little ahead of schedule. They gave me better directions to the airport and I got to their way ahead of schedule. I got bumped up to an earlier flight and the guy was like, "I'm supposed to charge you 25 bucks for that, but I'm not going to".. Cool.
I guess thats it, other than I know my way around Philly airport really good now. The rural areas of Virginia are really nice and really rural. The people who work at power companys are people too. It's good to be number 1. ¶ 1/23/2004 11:00:00 AM
