I’ve just returned from a few days on the road, that romantic dread of business travelers. You can learn a lot about life while jet-hopping and car-renting here and there. For professional observers, this can be as funny or ironic as it is enlightening, and surely Murphy was traveling when he wrote his “law.”

I always try to book the exit row aisle seat on the DEF side of the plane. This is because the middle seat is often open, so the aisle seat is the next best thing to First Class. On my trip home last night, I was in the B seat on the AB side of the exit row, and the guy in the A seat had shoulders as wide as a football field. I mean, the man probably played tackle on the football team in college.

I’m no little fellow myself, so I spent the entire 3 hour ride tilted to starboard. I had no choice, and of course, I started making up new rules for air travel that would prevent this kind of thing from happening. I mean, it’s one thing to have the side of a large woman’s butt pressing beneath the arm rail and intruding into my own butt space, but this was worse. I could not sit up straight in the seat. He then opened his computer, plugged in earphones, made selections from iTunes, and began writing reports. This worsened the situation, because now his right elbow overwhelmed the arm rail and further pushed me to the right.

“Guys like this ought to have to buy TWO tickets,” I thought. Yeah, right.

Earlier, I met a couple returning home to Dallas from a week in Scotland. They were lamenting the state of the dollar, which caused everything to be at least twice the price it is in the states. “We were bleeding money,” the man said. “Hemorrhaging would be a better term,” she replied. That got me thinking about how a weak dollar must benefit businesses that sell overseas. Who does a weak dollar benefit? Big American business interests.

See what happens to me at the airport?

I rented a car this trip. I usually take cabs, but this time I had to drive between cities, so the car was the only option. 2008 Chevy Blazer. Nice car, but I didn’t like the way it handled on the highway.

I don’t rent cars usually, because it’s just another thing that requires my attention, and when you’ve spent hour upon hour with clients (which I dearly love, BTW), sometimes the old brain just needs to relax.

I’ve got two words for driving in strange places these days: Google Maps. I mapped out each leg of the trip and printed the instructions and little images provided by Google (about ten different legs), and each was perfect. I used to look forward to the latest “Atlas,” but that has become as archaic as, well, certain forms of traditional media.

Finally, there’s landing at the DFW airport after a long trip. The flight was late, which meant I’d get home late. Everybody was going to be late, and of course, the pilot knew this, so we got the customary “We’ll get you there just as fast as we safely can.” On approach, he said, “We’ll be on the ground shortly and estimate being at the gate at 9:10.” It was 9 o’clock. We landed a few minutes later and got to the gate at 9:25.

Only in Dallas will air traffic control take a jet that’s an hour late and put them on the runway that’s farthest from their assigned gate. As anybody who uses our airport knows, It can be a very long ride from the runway to the gate.

But who’s keeping track of time?

This entry was posted on Friday, November 9th, 2007 at 9:01 am and is filed under LifeSlices. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.