Just got back from England. Another 48 hours of travel and business. It always sounds cool when you say “I have to go for a business trip to ……” (fill in the blanks with a interesting sounding name). It sounds important and it’s like “hey” you’re “the man”. In reality it usually means you hurry to some airport – way to early in the morning – run to get a cab, hurry to a meeting, spend a couple of hours at that dull meeting, hurry back again to catch another cab (if your lucky you catch a glimpse of the city your’e hurrying through), take a plane and land again at your starting point: Wham bam, thank you ma’am. Unless you’re spending some days at a conference or something, its just no fun. In short it describes my trip the last 48hrs. Once again flying on Londen Luton with Easyjet. This time my group consisted of three, myself included. So this time we managed to rent something bigger than a ‘Kia Picanto’. A fullsize Volkswagen Passat no less. This time we drove to some small city called Corby where we attended a meeting that lasted for 6hrs.
After that we drove to a hotel in the town of St. Albans near Luton, to meet afterwards with the agency that brought us on this project and spend the night. For some odd reason it took us an hour to get from Luton to Corby, but it took us almost two hours to drive to the hotel? We discussed the various aspects of the project and had a nice dinner (in my case a grilled filet mignon steak) and an English Lager. Yummy! At around 11pm we finished (Dutch time: midnight) and I returned to my room where I tried to sleep a bit, just to be rudely awakened around 2:20am from some annoying beeping alarm from outside. I somehow managed to more or less block that sound out and at 5am (although it seemed like just 1 hour later) my alarm went off and I had to get up and leave for the airport again.
After a short, uneventfull drive (except for us managing to hit a fat pidgeon flying by) we got back at Luton Airport, where we had a traditional English breakfast (sausages, white beans, bacon, tomatoes and hashed browns). Now, ever since we had that terror-alert in England, security is still extremely annoyingly high. So after ditching my bottle of water (no liquids allowed on board) I passed the checkpoint – or rather tried to pass it – they singled me out and told me that I needed to check-in my carry-on because it didn’t fit some stupid box they put together. WTF! I specifically bought that computer-case (a Belkin Neu-Elements TR) because it matches airline specific dimensions for carry-ons. It fits the regular metal boxes they use for measuring that. Knowing that arguing with security people – who have the IQ the equivalent of a Neanderthal – is useless, I decided to go back to the Easynet desk and check it in (after getting out my laptop). Going back I cut by the line and just went through security (you’re required to take off your shoes as well).
Folks, let’s face it: traveling by air is just one big annoyance. People say we prevent terrorist attacks like this. Well, I say they already succeeded in their goal. And I will have to go through this again on the 28th of September, when I have to attend yet another meeting in the England. Big sigh…