I had about eight days off between my last city, Irvine, CA and Inglewood so I was able to spend some time at home. However, even with that much time at home, this time off didn’t feel right. I didn’t get to see much of my wife and not too much of the kids. It wasn’t anyone’s fault; it was just that everyone had things going on. Adrienne was EXTREMELY busy working on closing a deal for work. She was up at six am and not getting home until six or so in the evening most nights. I know she needed to do what she was doing and I also know she would have rather been at home, but, she had to do what she had to do. So with that, the week seemed to pass quickly and without feeling like I had spent much time with my family, because I hadn’t. I did not like this.
The morning of my flight I woke up late, PERFECT!
I was supposed to be driving to my friend Gabe’s house and he was taking me to the airport. I was supposed to meet him at his house at seven am, I didn’t wake up until five after seven and my flight was at 8:33am. I call Gabe right away and told him I would be there ASAP, be ready. Of course he was already ready lol.
I quickly got ready and went to Gabe’s. He was sitting outside in his Jeep, engine running; ready to go when I got there. I threw my luggage in the back and off we went. While he drove, I used my phone to check in to my flight. Even so, I am still thinking there is no way I am making this flight. It is now about 7:50am and we have to get all the way to GSP airport, about 20-25 min. from Gabe’s house.
As I checked in on my phone, it said the flight was on time and ready to go, I was hoping for a delay. But then a message popped up and said there had been changes made to the flight, but it wouldn’t tell me what the change was. I called the airport to see if they could tell me what the change was. The girl on the phone said she did not see anything on her end that was changed.
Gabe gets me to the airport at 8:15am. Again, the flight is scheduled to leave at 8:33am! Gabe waits outside as I grab my luggage and head into the airport. I tell the girl at the counter my name and my flight and she said, “it probably won’t even print your ticket, they stop registration thirty minutes before the flight, but I will try”.
Much to here surprise the tickets printed. (Likely because I had checked in on my phone) She tells me to “hurry upstairs and through security and maybe there’s a chance you’ll make it, but it’s not likely”. (I thought to myself, neither were the tickets)
I make my way to the security line and…….it’s completely empty! No one in line. SWEET. So I get through security with no issues. I get to the gate and the door is open, but there is a red rope across the front. Grrr. But I knew that as long as that door wasn’t shut, there was still a chance. I tell the girl at the counter “Sorry I’m late, can I still get on the plane?” She says, “what?” So I repeat my, what I thought was a quite clear, question. She replies after I repeat the question with “do you think you’re late?” I said, “well yea, my ticket, the internet, my itinerary and the boards here in the airport all say that the plane departs at 8:33am and its 8:28 am now” She said, “you’re not late, we haven’t event started boarding yet” Then she drops the red rope, takes my ticket and let’s me board as the first passenger lol.
I’m not really sure what that was all about, but whatever. We boarded the plane and took off at about 8:50am.
So my trip was starting out fantastic.
We get to Atlanta and all is good with my connection. We took off about 20 minutes late, but no big deal. Somehow, after taking off 20 minutes late, when we land at LAX, the pilot said we were 45 minutes ahead of schedule. Not sure how that worked out, maybe a really good tail wind or something, even though we were flying against the jet stream lol. Either way, I started my day LATE and I arrive almost an hour early, not going to complain at all, it was just odd.
I get my rental car from National who are once again more than accommodating. I tell them I am in town to work for GM and could I please have a vehicle in their brand. (Otherwise they may put me in a Kia or Hyundai or something) The host says “sure, no problem, we’ll upgrade you for free from economy to mid side and you can have a Malibu” Awesome!
I’m quite comfortable with my android phone now so I punch in the hotel address on the phone nav and head to the hotel. Turns out it was only a few blocks away lol.
We are staying at the Double Tree Hotel again. The last one I stayed in was nice, so I was happy to see another one. This one was nice as well. They give you a warm chocolate chip cookie when you check in and even a local squirrel get his daily cookie.
My room was nice, but no place to keep food. Looks like eating out again I guess. But wait, in the last Double Tree they had a “happy Hour” that included heavy appetizers. So I went downstairs to see what they had and sure enough, between 3pm and 7pm they had the “managers happy hour”. So, being that it was not three yet, I headed to the site and I’ll come back here later.
The site was “Hollywood Park” It turns out that this is a horse race track as well as casino. Neither one interested me, but the horse track was kind of cool.
The parking lots that we were using for the driving were terrible. There were lots of broken places, dips and bumps, and grass growing through. They had obviously not been using these lots for quite some time. In fact, the Corvette and Camaro course looked like it was going to have to be mowed before they could use it lol.
The Volt course would again be a street drive. It was very limited with options for a route. No intersections nearby allowed U-turns and the ones that did were too far away and made the route too long. I ended up finding a not too visually appealing route that was simple and exactly one mile long.
I went back to get my cones so that I could lay out my staging area and the trailer was locked and the area looked like a ghost town. As I found out later, the crew had done such a great job setting up that they finished early and were allowed to leave early. Good for them, but it meant I could do what I wanted to do to get my course set up. But whatever, no big deal, tomorrow is my actual set up day, so I’ll just do it then.
I head back to the hotel and I see one of the guys downstairs and he tells me that Manhattan Beach is just down the street and that I should check it out.
I go upstairs to my room and just sit in the chair for a minute and almost fall asleep. Actually, I think I did doze off for a bit. I get up around 3:30pm and realize that the “happy hour” has started so I should go check out what its like.
When I get there it says “free appetizers with purchase of alcoholic beverage”. I explain to the guy that I do not drink alcohol and he said “no worries”. So I had a glass of water. The appetizers were good, barbecue ribs and barbecue chicken. I had a couple of plates of each. They were both quite spicy hot. I was a little concerned as to how that might affect me later, but oh well.
I decide to drive over to the beach and take a look. It certainly wasn’t “beach weather” as it was only about 65˚ and very windy, but I wanted to see.
So it was only about a ten-minute drive and I was there. I parked the car and walked down to the water. I will say, these waves are way bigger than what we see in South Carolina. I walked out on the pier just to have a look. My dad called while I was out there just to catch up, so I talked to him as I walked back to the car to head back to the hotel.
Back at the hotel I talk to Adrienne for a bit and then later that evening decided to go work out in the gym. It was right next to my room so why not?
I get to the track the next morning at 7:30ish and no one is there. I find one guy and ask him where everyone is and he says “everyone did such a good job yesterday that they get to come in later this morning”. He was able to get me some tape so tat I could mark off my parking spaces while I waited for them to get there so I could put out my cones.
As I am marking the spaces, one of the new additions to the team for this city showed up to help me out. When she walks up to me she can talk. It turns out she has laryngitis or something. WONDERFUL.! So I ask her “how are you going to do your job?, you have to be able to talk to these people”. She whispered to me that she would be fine in the morning, she was sipping on tea and her voice should be better by then. “OK” I said. What else could I say? Lol. So I showed her the rote and explained to her how the program works and then told her she could leave and go take care of her voice. I knocked out the rest of the set up and headed back to the hotel.
I talk with Adrienne a little and see how everything is going. Noah is dealing with an earache and Dylan and Austin are going away for the weekend on a youth trip. Adrienne sure has her hands full when I am gone and it makes me feel bad. I feel like I should be home to help.
Later I went downstairs for the appetizers again. This time it was pizza. Once again, it was spicy. All of it. But, it was free so I ate it lol. Later I met with several people from my team that were arriving. A few people were running late and missing flights (they obviously should be traveling with me being that I seem to have the traveling rabbits foot J ) There were some rental car logistics to sort through, but it all got handled and all was good.
At the start he event was going good. The route was working fine and attendance was a bit low so we were able to get into a rhythm. Day one was pretty uneventful.
Day two started ok as well but then….As I am walking back from one of m truck demos I am told that our route has been shut down because the facility police have an issue with what we are doing. GREAT! Everyone is on standby in the staging area while I go with Linda to speak to the security officer that has the complaint. When I find the gentleman he begins to tell me that he has been told that our drivers are “skidding tires”, “nearly causing accidents” and just being dangerous in general. I find this hard to believe but I am giving him the benefit of the doubt and ask him “if I talk to all the drivers, will he please let us continue to run the route?” He said sure.
I get all the drivers out of the cars and explain to them what was going on. As I thought, they all said no one had skidded a car or anything of the sort. But we had our discussion and on we went. Just as we finished talking, there was a gentleman that walked up. I was told he was the property manager and he wanted to speak with me about the issues. After some conversation with him I come to find out that no one had actually seen anything, they just heard some tire noise. In fact, this gentleman proceeds to tell me that it may have even been the corvettes and camaros making the tire noise and it was just assumed that it was the Volt’s. So the bottom line is, there was no issue with the Volt’s to begin with.
After work one night Darren and myself went to grab a bite to eat. We found a burger place called The Corner. I had a 1Lb burger with three cheeses, lettuce, tomato, cucumbers, chili, slaw and mayo on a deli style onion roll. It was awesome!
The rest of the event went off without a hitch.
I am excited to get home because Adrienne has been working on a surprise project at the house and I can’t for the life of me figure out what it is. Guess I will find out shortly.........
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