One Traveler's Opinion: Home for Christmas
Dec 20th, 2000, 10:45 AM
#1
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One Traveler's Opinion: Home for Christmas
“Home for the holidays” is deeply ingrained in most of the world’s cultures. It’s a deeply depressing thought to contemplate being stranded away from loved ones at the time of year when we are supposed to be closest. When we are young, we gravitate toward our parents’ homes. Sometime in mid-life, the scales tip and it is our own home that becomes the place around which we gather our family.
This is a true story of getting home for Christmas. It’s my present to the Fodors community. If you have a tale of your own, please add it.
* * * * *
I have always been wary of taking business trips around Christmas time. Airports are hectic, planes are full, and there’s always the risk of a storm in Denver or Chicago that topples flight schedules around the country like so many dominos. Besides, most business activity slows down after the middle of the month, what with shopping and parties. By December 20, there isn’t a lot of “business” to be done.
But in 1994 I broke that rule. My company was deep into a process called “due diligence” – the ferreting out of fact and fiction in an acquisition or investment – and my company hoped to close this particular transaction before the new year. The other company, based near Atlanta, was equally anxious to complete the deal. And so on Thursday, December 22, I left Washington D.C. for a one-day trip to Atlanta. To ensure that it was a one-day trip I took neither toiletries nor change of clothes. Just me, myself and my briefcase.
It is 632 miles from Washington to Atlanta, no more than an hour and a half via Delta Air Lines, even with the typical stacking of flights around Hartsfield Airport. My flight left at 6:30 a.m. and I was in the company’s lobby at 9 a.m. Leaving nothing to chance, I had with me tickets for three different return flights at 5:00, 7:30, and 9:30 p.m.
Our negotiations continued over lunch and through the afternoon. By 4 p.m. we were at a stalemate. I suggested resuming the negotiation after Christmas. My counterpart suggested we could break the impasse over dinner. My 5 p.m. flight left without me but by then we had a breakthrough of sorts. I could make the 7:30 p.m. flight and my counterpart offered to drive me to the airport.
If you live in Atlanta, you are well acquainted with “the 285”, the perimeter expressway around that city, which in turn has spawned half a dozen mini-cities at major interchanges. We were traveling from an office complex north of the city to the airport, which is south of Atlanta. In 1994, the expressway through the center of the city was being rebuilt, further adding to the already strained capacity of I-285. On that fateful evening, we and possibly 250,000 Atlantans sought to converge on the airport. To make a long story short, we didn’t make the 7:30 flight. Had it been physically possible, I would have sworn that at 7:30 we were further from the airport than when we had left over an hour earlier.
(continued)
This is a true story of getting home for Christmas. It’s my present to the Fodors community. If you have a tale of your own, please add it.
* * * * *
I have always been wary of taking business trips around Christmas time. Airports are hectic, planes are full, and there’s always the risk of a storm in Denver or Chicago that topples flight schedules around the country like so many dominos. Besides, most business activity slows down after the middle of the month, what with shopping and parties. By December 20, there isn’t a lot of “business” to be done.
But in 1994 I broke that rule. My company was deep into a process called “due diligence” – the ferreting out of fact and fiction in an acquisition or investment – and my company hoped to close this particular transaction before the new year. The other company, based near Atlanta, was equally anxious to complete the deal. And so on Thursday, December 22, I left Washington D.C. for a one-day trip to Atlanta. To ensure that it was a one-day trip I took neither toiletries nor change of clothes. Just me, myself and my briefcase.
It is 632 miles from Washington to Atlanta, no more than an hour and a half via Delta Air Lines, even with the typical stacking of flights around Hartsfield Airport. My flight left at 6:30 a.m. and I was in the company’s lobby at 9 a.m. Leaving nothing to chance, I had with me tickets for three different return flights at 5:00, 7:30, and 9:30 p.m.
Our negotiations continued over lunch and through the afternoon. By 4 p.m. we were at a stalemate. I suggested resuming the negotiation after Christmas. My counterpart suggested we could break the impasse over dinner. My 5 p.m. flight left without me but by then we had a breakthrough of sorts. I could make the 7:30 p.m. flight and my counterpart offered to drive me to the airport.
If you live in Atlanta, you are well acquainted with “the 285”, the perimeter expressway around that city, which in turn has spawned half a dozen mini-cities at major interchanges. We were traveling from an office complex north of the city to the airport, which is south of Atlanta. In 1994, the expressway through the center of the city was being rebuilt, further adding to the already strained capacity of I-285. On that fateful evening, we and possibly 250,000 Atlantans sought to converge on the airport. To make a long story short, we didn’t make the 7:30 flight. Had it been physically possible, I would have sworn that at 7:30 we were further from the airport than when we had left over an hour earlier.
(continued)
Dec 20th, 2000, 10:46 AM
#2
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Posts: n/a
(part 2 of 2)
My counterpart had a cell phone in his car, and he checked on my 9:30 flight (cell phones were not quite as ubiquitous back then). I saw his grimace before I heard the news. “The 9:30 is cancelled,” he said. “Weather in Dallas.” I had been through this before. Washington has two airports, three if you include BWI in Baltimore. I used his phone to call my travel agent and got the night service, which was useless. He called his agent. “We do a ton of business with Delta,” he assured me. But it was no use. The flights were full. The best I could be guaranteed was a flight Friday afternoon. Everything else would be standby. More ominously, the weather system that had grounded planes in Dallas was making its way east.
I am the kind of traveler who has never taken a gate agent’s “no” as a definitive answer. I turned down my counterpart’s offer of a hotel and asked that we press on to the airport. There, I stood by for the last two flights of the evening. At 11 p.m., I and about two dozen other people stood around the gate dejectedly.
In the meantime, an idea had formed in my mind. I blurted it out: “Anybody interested in driving to Washington?” Two dozen pairs of eyes looked me over, suspiciously. “It’s ten or eleven hours,” I said. “You can be home by noon.”
I guess I didn’t fit the serial killer profile because, in the end, four of us rented a car and before midnight were headed up I-85. A cell phone allowed us to communicate with incredulous and dubious spouses. We dozed in shifts; my turn to drive came about 4 a.m. An enterprising executive with an OAG checked for early morning flights out of Spartanburg, Charlotte, Greensboro, Raleigh/Durham, and Richmond as we neared those cities. But the home-bound rush was in full swing that Friday morning, and standby seats were the best that was offered. So through the morning, we swapped stories about travel horrors and our reasons for wanting to be home so badly.
My companions dropped me off at my home shortly after 10:30 a.m. My wife met me at the door. She didn’t say I was crazy; she didn’t berate me for missing the earlier flights; she didn't say I should have waited and taken the afternoon flight. Instead, she hugged me, cried, and said I smelled awful. I was never so glad to be home.
My counterpart had a cell phone in his car, and he checked on my 9:30 flight (cell phones were not quite as ubiquitous back then). I saw his grimace before I heard the news. “The 9:30 is cancelled,” he said. “Weather in Dallas.” I had been through this before. Washington has two airports, three if you include BWI in Baltimore. I used his phone to call my travel agent and got the night service, which was useless. He called his agent. “We do a ton of business with Delta,” he assured me. But it was no use. The flights were full. The best I could be guaranteed was a flight Friday afternoon. Everything else would be standby. More ominously, the weather system that had grounded planes in Dallas was making its way east.
I am the kind of traveler who has never taken a gate agent’s “no” as a definitive answer. I turned down my counterpart’s offer of a hotel and asked that we press on to the airport. There, I stood by for the last two flights of the evening. At 11 p.m., I and about two dozen other people stood around the gate dejectedly.
In the meantime, an idea had formed in my mind. I blurted it out: “Anybody interested in driving to Washington?” Two dozen pairs of eyes looked me over, suspiciously. “It’s ten or eleven hours,” I said. “You can be home by noon.”
I guess I didn’t fit the serial killer profile because, in the end, four of us rented a car and before midnight were headed up I-85. A cell phone allowed us to communicate with incredulous and dubious spouses. We dozed in shifts; my turn to drive came about 4 a.m. An enterprising executive with an OAG checked for early morning flights out of Spartanburg, Charlotte, Greensboro, Raleigh/Durham, and Richmond as we neared those cities. But the home-bound rush was in full swing that Friday morning, and standby seats were the best that was offered. So through the morning, we swapped stories about travel horrors and our reasons for wanting to be home so badly.
My companions dropped me off at my home shortly after 10:30 a.m. My wife met me at the door. She didn’t say I was crazy; she didn’t berate me for missing the earlier flights; she didn't say I should have waited and taken the afternoon flight. Instead, she hugged me, cried, and said I smelled awful. I was never so glad to be home.
Dec 20th, 2000, 11:30 AM
#3
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Thank you, Neal, for the story and for the reminder, so apropos to the season, that home is where the heart is. We really do take for granted the technology that zooms us all over the world. All it takes is a weather pattern to bring home to us that a journey is something more than just a quick transit from point A to point B. And to get gloppy about it...the outer journey is symbolic of the inner journey, with all its challenges and ordeals. Best of the season to you, Neal, and peace!
Dec 21st, 2000, 05:17 AM
#5
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I thought the same thing, xxx, if you mean the movie with John Candy and Steve Martin. I saw part of it on tv a couple of weeks ago. I believe Neal's story, though, because I've been in the same situation. I was stranded in Memphis airport in winter, iced in. There were record snowstorms that year all over the country. I was a young girl traveling by myself, trying to get back to Mississippi to school. A business man on the same cancelled flight (all flights were cancelled) decided to rent a car and drive south. He offered me and a couple of others rides back to Mississippi. What a very nice man. I, and my family, were very grateful to him for getting me home.
