Against my will and inclination, and after a pretty decent weekend hanging out with my teenage daughter going to the movies and teaching her how to drive) my ultra-short drop-in business travel to the Buckeye State is underway. Flights yesterday were on-time and uneventful, but were the bumpiest flights I’ve ever been on – roller coaster time at 35000 feet. People were panicking, and drink service on the second plane never got finished, because the cockpit had to keep ordering the attendants to sit down and strap in. The little one-year-old girl sitting across the aisle from me thought it was awesome, which was at least refreshingly entertaining.

The universe kind of balanced itself when I got to the hotel, as the staff saw fit to upgrade me to the swanky* king suite, so at least I have plenty of room to stretch out while I’m not in the office.

So, what am I doing in Ohio? I am spending a day and a half here “facilitating the transition” as it were; there’s a software test going on here this week for a project I’m handing off – I’m here with my replacement, and I’m handing her over to the team as the new boss. Not that I was ever really the old boss – I was just warming the seat, really, but I’m slowly letting go of this project that I inherited a few months ago when somebody retired abruptly**.

I accomplished most of my goals and duties here within the first hour or so – we’ve got a meeting this afternoon to do some things “officially”, but it’s pretty much done. At this point, I say hi to some folks, fight with the new timekeeping system, do my usual job, displaced about 500 miles northwest of usual, and sit here and wait until 24 hours before my flight leaves, with the Southwest airlines web page staged and ready to go, so I can check in at the earliest possible moment to get decent boarding position for the return legs of the trip.

I don’t actually mind southwest and their “no assigned seats” and boarding groups business – apparently, it makes the flights a little cheaper (okay), and it doesn’t put on airs; modern airline travel isn’t sexy or luxurious; it’s basically cramming a bunch of people into a pressurized tube like livestock and throwing them into the air with jet engines, after making them take their shoes off and dance like a trained monkey for the privilege. The experience is pretty much institutionalized unpleasantness in the best of times. While not exactly embracing the “bus/cattle car in the sky” reality, Southwest doesn’t attempt to pretend it’s really anything more. I can at least appreciate the honesty.

So, that’s my life for the first part of this week. Hope yours is better. Me, I’d rather be at home with the option to rehearse my bass lines for the weekend.

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*well, as swanky as the suite can be at a Courtyard by the airport. I have a big bed, a separate living room, a bar sink, and a fridge and microwave. I’ll take it over the standard equipment.

**I’m not euphemizing here; it was literally an abrupt retirement, in the sense that this individual didn’t show up one Monday, and when called, the response was “Oh, I retired on Friday – you should have gotten the paperwork.”