Atlanta? ...more like Mylanta

Who was it that said you have to be "better off in a pine box on a slow train bound for Georgia"? I took a plane and got there in under two hours... and alive!

Picture it: my very first business trip, me in a suit, buttoned-down and het up, fingernails dug an inch deep into the roof of the fuselage and hanging on for dear life until... I fell asleep. How very narcoleptic of me. Disrespectful, too. Insolence in the face of eminent death is usually punishable, surprisingly, by a long and uneventful life. :p

Getting on the plane and just going must be getting too stale and boring these days, and it wouldn't be dramatic enough to have just delayed the flight. The gimmick is to zip that sardine can up, gas up, and get us in the hotseat before packing it in like a belated April Fool's Day sucker punch. Yes, indeed, we were on the tarmac before we got the go code to turn our asses around and go home. Seems there was a storm a-brewing in Atlanta, and rather than keep us pent up on the plane indefinitely, they allowed us to offload into the terminal indefinitely.

Another associate accompanied me on the trip. Upon being delayed ("groundstopped" in industry jargon), he phoned his wife, and she was able to relay the conditions at Atlanta's airport. I remember hearing something to the affect of "nickel-sized hail". I felt like Dirty Harry when I scoffed, "It's only nickel-sized." :D

I was up at 3 a.m., and the plane was due to depart at six on the nose. Punctuality, in a legal sense, is evidently solely the obligation of the ticket holder and not necessarily reciprocated (as you'll see a little further down) . Under the circumstances, leaving two and half hours late seemed like sweet charity compared to, ironically, being held hostage by the airline itself.

Back on the plane after being shat out at the terminal, we finally departed. As we taxied onto the runway, I was happy to inform the flight attendant that the carry-on bag beside me had misplaced it's owner, a kindly African-American allergy-case of an older lady who disembarked roughshod like the rest of us and was last seen sneezing, hacking, and futilely hailing some unidentified airplane down the length of an unidentified runway on an unidentified major news channel. Man, she was fast. ;) I can just see their reasoning from the last paragraph: you can wait for us but we sure as shit ain't waiting for you. I only hope her and the bag she sent ahead to scout out the situation were finally reunited.

We arrived to little, er... make that no fanfare save the gymnastics of my stomach turning somersaults in disapproval of my hyperbolic flight-mode demeanor. In fairness to me, it was like old-hat on the return flight and me doing the crossword puzzle the whole way in Continental's in-flight magazine. But getting there was a bitch, and it elicited my titular observation as I was en route to the jobsite: "Atlanta? ...more like Mylanta."

The delay itself only lasted long enough to push my return flight back by 20 hours. I had actually been instructed to return to Planet Houston the very same day, but Mother Nature can be a mother... nature, I guess. No matter. My co-worker was slated to stay the night anyway. As long as I didn't mind wearing the same suit two days in a row, we were able to negotiate a hotel room with two beds. (I tried to talk him out it, but you know, he's married. Aren't they all? :p )

The hotel itself was pricey and billable to the client, methinks. Yeah! I'm not gonna name names, but this was no normal hotel. It wasn't the Waldorf-Astoria, but beggers can't be choosers, you know. I guess providing architectural services for lawyers has it perks -- pitfalls, too, perhaps.

Our only outing into the city itself came that night when we wandered down the street to a middle-of-the-road steakhouse and grill. It made a decent oak-grilled steak that it was passing off for prime rib. Very tricky and tasty at the same time.

We were both beat from hoofing it all day, and though I like the nightlife, I can't divulge this to people who can divulge this to people, if you know what I mean. We settled for returning to the one-room penthouse and crashing out. We still had several hours of work to wake up for anyhow and a three o'clock plane flight to catch back to the Bayou City.

I can delve further into the excruciating minutia upon request. Let me know if you've ever been to the state and what you thought. I personally liked what little I got to see. From my co-workers assessment, the best peaches he's ever tasted came from right across the border from Georgia. Ouch! How'd we ever get out of there alive. ;)