I’ve done some crazy trips, but this one I’m (finally) wrapping up may take the cake. It went like this:
- Saturday (6/14): Fly Seattle to Amsterdam (arrive Sunday morning)
- Spend Sunday in a fog, have dinner with Ingrid and Michael
- Monday: panel discussion at ING Bank seminar on banking for the poor
- Tuesday: fly to Tunis from Amsterdam (via Paris); go directly into meetings with MFI customer in Tunis, then a brief 45 minute rest at hotel, then dinner until close to midnight
- Wednesday: up early to catch 8:30 AM flight from Tunis to Dubai. Paid a bit extra to upgrade to business class (a most excellent choice, even if I did sleep most of the way rather than trying to work as planned - the consecutive nights of 4 hours of sleep had finally gotten to me). Arrive Dubai
- Thursday: meeting in Dubai in the afternoon, then to airport to catch 11:35 PM flight out from Dubai to Atlanta. Sadly, I saw nothing of Dubai; the meeting was in a building adjacent to my hotel, which means that I literally was in the Dubai air strictly while going to and from cars going to and from the airport. Next time
- Friday: Land in Atlanta after (nearly) 15 hour non-stop flight from Dubai, which is a long-ass time to sit in a coach seat. Have quick conversation with Beth (in London at the moment) about a business firedrill, then catch earlier than planned flight back to Seattle. Arrive around 10:45 AM PDT.
I did the calculations and didn’t spend more time on planes than on the ground, but I think it’s highly likely I slept more on planes than on the ground. The funny think is - I feel pretty awake and alert at the moment. We’ll see how long that lasts… I think my physical manifestation on this dear planet may be more beat up than I realize.
Another interesting number: at the moment I’m averaging 2780 flight miles per night spent in a hotel for 2008, which seems a bit insane. Hoping to keep travel to a minimum for the next six weeks ahead of the wedding, then settle into those comfy class Lufthansa and South African Airways business class seats we burned the miles on for the honeymoon.
PS. Dubai is really far away. Interesting trivia note, though, is that if one were able to get a nonstop from Dubai to Seattle it would actually be shorter than the nonstop from Dubai to Atlanta… this is irking due to the 5 hour flight I’m now on from Atlanta to Seattle. I suspect the DXB-SEA (or any west coast airport) doesn’t work due to the whole ETOPS thing.
