TAPed Out



They even locked the bloody mini-bar!



My story starts something like Lord of the Flies, but my plane did not dive into the sea and instead we diverted 30 minutes south to a resort town to refuel (so close, yet so Faro). So maybe it is more like that terrible movie with Matthew McConaughey and Camera Diaz (have fun on that goose hunt). Anyhow, by the time we retook-off and landed where we were supposed to be, I missed my connection and with it went a great business opportunity. These things happen, said my boss's boss. I know, but I am sorry, I replied.

I am really sorry since I am now stuck in travelers purgatory (the airport hotel) and wait at the mercy of an inept airline. Maybe they are smarter than I am giving them credit for, though, and they are slowly and systematically giving me a drawn out case of whip lash from all the head shaking I've done the past 36 hours?  Portuguese torture? Probably not. TAP Airlines is as a whole no worse than the rest, but bloody hell they are collectively no smarter the broken water heater back home. I'd gladly take a frigid shower just to lose the idiocracy I am now surrounded by. A badge doesn't make you smart and a broken water heater doesn't make your shower not your own. But I am here, not where I am supposed to be or at home.

Talking Heads

Talk to the Hand

Well I am finally home after three-plus-weeks of working from the road.  I’d like to say I have a profound post for my dedicated eD followers, but I am afraid I am too damn tired to even try to go there.  I did learn a few things, along the way, though.  I’m always looking for perspective, but what I am talking about here has more to do with inertia.  The movement of our surroundings has an impact on us, and we can all garner a powerful hold on our lives if we can somehow influence the world around us.

This last trip I went south, west, east and back west again.  And in my jet-lag induced hysteria, I realized that the influence on our surroundings, thankfully, does not have to be intellectual or philosophical.  Rather, we just have to encourage the behaviors we enjoy to be a part of, and discourage those that put us in a tizzy.  Again, I’m not going deep here.  I’m talking a ground out to first:

Take Off, Eh?

This post was written in 3B - three beers - and it looks good, eh?

A week on a plane – sounds kind of like a terribly awesome Samuel L. Jackson movie.  Fasten your seat belts because this month, it’s my life.  Okay, I exaggerated a little bit.  A clock-in and clock-out work-week on a plane, is more like it.  I will spend over 40 hours this month on a plane.  Ear-phones and noise-cancellation head-phones are my secret.  But an entire work-week without the water cooler to make the time go by?  Take off, eh! 

Moral of the story – be careful what you wish for.  I always wanted a job that would take me places.  I wanted a gig that would let me meet people from different cultures, nosh on culinary staples designed for worldly pallets, and circle cubicles in unexpected dimensions.

And that is what I am doing – to a certain extent.  But we all know that business travel is not as lavish or glorious as it sounds.  And it isn’t (though I have met a wonderful assortment of people this year).  In the end, nothing is better than eating over-salted popcorn with my main squeeze.  And that is where I would always rather be.  There is a preverbal silver lining, other than perspective: the opportunity four-times over to drain my laptop battery on a tray table while I inch closer towards the final period to that novel I always talk about. 

Happy writing, from Gate 76B.

No hyphenated words were fatigued during this post.

Perspective

...I talk about it, write about it, and think about it all time.  Sometimes it just shows up at your door, and when it does you sure as hell better pick it up.

Eight Year Anniversary, by Jonathan Makiri.


Half Dome from Jonathan Makiri on Vimeo.

Eight years ago today my mother should have died. During a hail storm, while descending Half Dome’s cables in Yosemite, she slipped and fell 80 feet, landing on a small ledge. Without the ledge my mom would have fallen to her death thousands of feet below. My then 16-year old brother watched the whole thing happen.

Getting off the phone with my father when he broke the news to me, I had one overriding emotion: anger. Having been to Half Dome a few times myself, I had told her not to do the cables.

She survived and life continued doing what it does.