In the end, I made it onto the flight from Jo’burg to Cape Town tonight and that is a huge relief. I still have to navigate late night car rental at the airport (I think), find my hotel, and be lively for a 10 AM meeting after having slept very little in the last 33 hours and 10,000 miles of travel, but I suspect all of that will either be viable or postponeable. The option was to not make the plane, stay in Jo’burg overnght, fly to Cape Town tomorrow for a meeting I would have already missed, fly back to Jo’burg, have my Wednesday meetings, and then leave… in other words, bleah. But that’s not the case, so no it’s just tired ramblings…
Yesterday (or the equivalent), my driver to the airport in Seattle turned out to have experience with Africa. He knew Jo’burg (apparently it’s changed a bit in the last 15 years, who knew?) and then said, “yeah, I was in Angola in 1980 with the Soviet Army.” Yikes. Nice guy with a pretty rough past. A South African friend fought up on the Namibia-Angola border around the same time and from the sound of things (or lack of sound, given how little anyone wants to discuss it), it was pretty gnarly.
Oh, and my nice Russian driver also suggested that I come and work for them for a few weeks before I take my next long flight and I’ll have no trouble sleeping (this after a 4 AM pickup).
On the plus side, my Skyteam status now means that I can pop into the relevant lounge when traveling internationally on a Skyteam partner, so I kicked it in the Crown Room Club in Atlanta for a while this afternoon. I’m unfamiliar and vaguely suspicious of both Delta and Atlanta as a whole, so never really relaxed, but they still provided a free cocktail, some pretzels, and a quiet place to chill while waiting for the flight to Dakar. Then on the flight to Dakar - in coach - asked for a bourbon and coke and got a glass of coke and ice and the cutest (ever!) little mini bottle of Woodford Reserve. I thought of Mark - he would like that.
More flying goodness: AC at the seat from Atlanta to Johannesburg, and we flew right through the Bermuda triangle and either nothing happened or we didn’t notice the seamless transition to an alternate universe. Way productive - I’d love to see how productive I am on a MacBook Pro in business class…
Other than that, I’m still working on reverting to a more relaxed travel methodology. My email is completely caught up, yes, but I also finished a book (Eggers’ “What is the What”, which took a while to get into but then at the end I wanted another 500 pages) and redid my blog theme and… and other than the 3 hours of fitful sleep on the plane last night (?) I pretty much stayed busy. Working on that… and revisiting how I travel overall. This trip is short so my suitcase is a carryon and is barely half full, but my laptop bag probably weighs 25 pounds. I even did OK on books - only brought three, and one is already finished and another isn’t really a read-it-all-the-way-through type deal, so maybe I’ll buy something new over here.
No, the problem is that I have the following in the laptop bag:
- Laptop
- 2 spare batteries
- 2 books
- 3 full-size moleskines
- Prescription sunglasses
- 2 prescription bottles
- Altoids
- Noise-isolation earphones (in an Altoids tin) from M-Audio
- iPod
- Several pens
- AirCard
- An inflatable neck pillow, wrapped up with an eyemask
- Lots of business cards
- Manila folders with travel docs, work docs, and a big thick one (over half an inch) with “stuff to read”
- A big case with my large, noise-canceling headphones from audio-technica (different use case than the M-Audio in-ear ‘phones)
- The last 3 months of the Harvard Business Review (or is it 4?)
- The latest Inc.
- Foolishly purchased at airport to get change to buy food on Delta domestic flight: the current issue of Wired
And probably some other stuff… clearly I need both a) a new bag that doubles as a single bag for 3-5 day trips and b) to lose a ton of the shit and start carrying a laptop, a book, tunes, and little else. I just get nervous about getting bored on these 34 hour extravaganzas.
I love my current laptop bag - a Victorinox messenger bag - but it’s not that great for plans (doesn’t close tightly, doesn’t hold all the crap without turning into a bloated disaster, etc. Any ideas on great bags that you love? Send ‘em my way…
Finally, two notes: on the seatback map on the Delta plane, the capital of DRC showed up as “Kinshasa (Leopoldville)” which just seems wrong (I think it was only on the French version of the map), and also I’m hoping that keeping my window shade open and trying to catch some rays on the flight from Dakar to Jo’burg helped get me some vitamin D and start to shift my body clock. The entire rest of the plane was aseleep - maybe they’re planning to watch the Super Bowl - and even the flight attendant got pissed when she came by with water and was blinded by the light. But I think she got over it.
I was going to bitch a lot about South African Airways and how they stranded me in Johannesburg in a shitty hotel, but that didn’t happen so suffice to say I now love them very much and am looking forward to flying SAA again in about 36 hours. Until then…
