Travel troubles
I’m in Atlanta right now getting ready to do an appearance for Speedo with Dynamo swim team. I have to say that the trip out here was not as great as I hoped, although at least not as disastrous as a few of my trips this summer. Since I fly all the time on United, I have a ton of upgrades and was trying to use them for this trip. But I guess first class was full, so I had to stay back in economy plus. Boo.
Then, I had to climb sideways over the seats a lot because the lady next to me was passed out or had random stuff on the tray next to me so I couldn’t walk out. Well, the last time I came back to my seat, the seat cushion slipped out from under my foot and I sat down a little harder than expected. The guy behind me freaked out and yelled at me. I apologized, but he was really a jerk about it. Seriously, it was an accident; no one slams her butt into a rock-hard seat on purpose. And it’s not like he wasn’t slamming his tray down on my seat back the whole flight. Oh yeah, and before this all happened I had woken up from my little plane nap and lifted my seat back up because I didn’t want to crowd anyone unnecessarily. Grr … I hate jerks, that means you, Mr. 10A.
To make things worse, when I finally got here I couldn’t find my driver. It’s the third time it’s happened, and so it was a little annoying. I called my agent, who called Speedo, who called the car company, who tried to find the driver. Time passed. Eventually, the message that the car service couldn’t contact the driver was relayed back to me, and I took a taxi (who said they would take credit cards but then when we got to the hotel wanted me to pay cash). Grr. Two-and-half hours after I landed, I was finally able to check in to my hotel.
That’s when things started to get better. Jason, the head coach of Dynamo, who used to be one of my coaches at Stanford a few years back, took care of everything. Then we had a really good dinner at a place that had really good garlic rolls. It was great to catch up and talk about what I was doing, what the other girls who had swam with me were doing, and what was going on with him. Then I got back to the hotel and found that there is a romance writer’s conference here — pretty cool.
I also have to report something that happened in training that I am really proud about. Thursday afternoon, we had one of our dryland circuit days. We were doing five stations for 10 minutes each, and I managed to climb the rope 10 times in 10 minutes. I can’t give you an accurate height measurement, but the top is a couple of stories above the ground.
Tomorrow, I am practicing with the Dynamo team and then doing a little talk and clinic and signing autographs. It should be fun. I’m looking forward to it. But first, I am going to luxuriate and have a totally stretched out night of sleep in my huge comfy hotel bed with no cat trying to sprawl out and force me off the bed. That means you, Ms. Jackson.