This trip was a pain in the neck...

The neck is a rather amazing feat of engineering. Think about the logistics involved in giving your head the range of mobility that we enjoy, as well as the necessary strength to effortlessly keep it upright throughout the day - it's really quite remarkable. What, you may ask, has prompted this fascination with the neck? The fact that mine hasn't worked properly since Friday. But perhaps I should back up and tell you about the comedy of errors that was my trip to Washington.


All was going well as my boss and I left the office to head to the airport. We weren't checking any bags, and we'd gotten there plenty early so that we wouldn't have to rush about. We found the correct set of self-serve kiosks to print out our tickets, and Boss J had no trouble with hers. The kiosk refused to print mine, however, so we proceeded to the desk to find out what the trouble was. It turns out that the travel service provider that my company uses had reserved a ticket for me, but had forgotten to issue it. The wonderfully helpful lady at the desk called them and was able to iron it out in a relatively short amount of time (about 15 minutes) and I was given my ticket. Neither of us had any trouble clearing security or US customs, so we grabbed some supper and went to sit at our gate only to find out that our flight had been delayed by about 45 minutes. And our gate had changed. Off we went to our new gate, where we sat and waited. Then they changed our gate again. More walking, sitting and waiting. After another gate change and some more waiting, we were finally on our plane and on our way to DC.


We landed at the Dulles airport, which is about at 30-45 minute drive from Washington, and called a cab to take us to our hotel. Somehow we managed to find the one cab driver who had no idea how to get there. With a GPS. Almost an hour and a half later, between the GPS, Boss J and myself, we managed to direct the cabby to our hotel. By this time it was after 11pm, and we had to be up early the next morning for our training course. The hotel was lovely, with one of the most comfortable beds I've ever slept on in my life. And the breakfast buffet at the hotel was very yummy.


Boss J had printed out the location of the training course before we left, so we called another cab and headed to Tyson's Corner, which turned out to be a huge complex of office buildings in Virginia, 30 minutes away. The course organizer had forgotten to include the building number, or her contact info, in the meeting notification, so we had to track down her number via our home office here in Toronto. Twenty minutes later, we find out that the meeting is actually back in DC, one block from our hotel! The organizer had forgotten to send us the location update. So an hour and an $80 round-trip cab ride later, we found ourselves at our training session. The session itself was great, the new program was great, and the people we met were very nice.


After the session, given the number of things that had already gone wrong, we thought it would be best to head straight to the airport, so off we went in our most successful cab ride of the trip, arriving at the airport and checking in without any major hassles. Security again was no problem, and we went to find our gate before grabbing something to eat. Our flight was once again delayed, so we had a good 3 hour wait ahead of us. So we sat, and waited. About 40 minutes before the departure time, Boss J noticed that there weren't that many people sitting near us and got up to check the board to see if the gate had changed. It hadn't, so we kept waiting. Twenty minutes later, I had to use the washroom, and on my way by looked at the board and saw that not only had they just changed the gate, but they had changed it to a gate in a different terminal! So with 20 minutes until the flight was scheduled to leave, we made a mad dash for the new gate, arriving just as they were starting to board the plane. We got home late enough that Boss J told me to work from home on Friday, which I was very glad to do.


Have I mentioned that through this entire trip I was carrying around a 15lb computer case, the result of which was that I woke up on Friday morning unable to move my neck without causing tremendous amounts of pain? And that I was stupid enough to think that I could 'work it out' by helping a friend move on Saturday? And that the result of said stupidity was an even more crippling pain on Sunday? Do you know how many things you do everyday that require you to use the muscles in your neck? Not just during the day, either. Every time you roll over or shift positions while you are sleeping, you use your neck muscles. And every time I do, it wakes me up. I haven't had a decent night's sleep since Thursday.


At this point, I would normally try to think of something positive to say about the trip to Washington. But I'm too tired right now. And my neck hurts.