So last week had me racing over to Australia and back for a very short and whirlwind tour.  It was a travel classic …

Arriving at the airport in Boston, I found out only 30 minutes before my connecting flight to LAX that the airport was being shut down because of the blizzard-like conditions.  The airport was only shut down for three hours, but it was enough that I missed the connecting flight in LA.  Upon landing, I was met at the gate by an agent who gave me a coupon for the night stay and a replacement ticket.  (The flights only leave once per day to Australia.)  I showed up at the airport the next afternoon (well in advance of the evening departure) only to find that they had booked me for two days later – not one day later.  When I asked why, they indicated that there was nothing available that evening – and I mean nothing.  I checked every possible airline and got the same story.  The problem of course, is that even if I had made that flight one day late, I would have needed to land and go directly to the keynote I was supposed to give for noontime.  The long story here ends that I did end up getting on the flight with standby (back of the plane – middle seat).

Landing in Melbourne at 11:15am on Monday, I immediately raced across the city to make it with 15 minutes to spare in order to give the talk.  At this point I was going on 1 hour sleep from the night before on the plane and 4 hours sleep the night before that in LAX.  After the talk, I went directly to two clients and then back to the airport for a flight back to Sydney that evening.  I’m not sure exactly what my wake to sleep ratio was by the time I rested the head on Monday night, but I know that between leaving on Friday afternoon and crashing on Monday, I had a total of five hours.  Three cheers for travel.  🙂

Well, one day in Sydney, one day in Canberra, one day in Brisbane and two days on the Gold Coast later, it was the whole thing in reverse.  Now before you ask why I don’t have any pictures … The one thing I will say about Blue is that they know how to efficiently plan, shuttle and execute on a full-time itinerary.  On the plus side, I’ve collected an air mile or two this year.  Smile.  🙂