Business Trip

Wednesday evening of last week I drove down to Fairfax, Virginia to attend a two-day training symposium for small, disadvantaged businesses looking to being involved in the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) with so-called design-build jobs.  It was super boring.  What was interesting was the fact that not only did RJM pay me for my miles traveled, but also for my time spent driving (over three hours down and four back) and my room and other amenities.  What does that mean?  It means that I stayed at the local Hilton in a room that cost more than $200 a night and I was able, nay, encouraged, to order room service.  That was pretty cool.

I had a real bed to sleep on for two nights.  What luxury!  Don't get me wrong, the air mattress that the Larsens lent me is much better than sleeping on the floor, but it was still really nice to sleep on an innerspring mattress, if just for a little bit.  And I ordered over sixty dollars worth of food for dinner on second night (I had eaten before I left on the first night).  Admittedly, everything was over-priced, but my boss had told me to enjoy myself and to have a good meal while I was away since the company was covering it.

However, because I had such a large meal for dinner when I usually have something much more modest, I was super-charged with energy and got nearly no sleep that second night.  After the morning of meetings, I got lunch at the hotel restaurant and drank four glasses of Pepsi in an attempt to ensure that I would be awake enough for the drive home.  Either I didn't need it or it work great because I was totally alert for the drive home.  What I didn't count on was having to stop three different times to pee.  At one of the gas stations I stopped at, there was a line and I was actually doing the "pee-pee dance," which I think was made all the more amusing by my professional business clothes.  It was really good to be home on Friday night, air mattress and all (I slept for about thirteen hours Friday night/Saturday morning).

I realize that I barely touched on what happened at the actual business meeting, but even if that was the point of me going down to Virginia, it wasn't the highlight of the trip.