I’m on my return from Las Vegas to home and stranded at the Phoenix airport overnight. It is now 12:30am and I’ve got a little corner of the airport to myself. I found a little two chair seat hidden between some stairs and elevators near the “rescue area.” It will be my place for the night unless I have an urge to meander.
It’s been a long day, starting with the end of Summit, continued with a delay in Las Vegas and then my overnight stint here. Summit ended today with some minor sessions that I won’t bore you with here. The closing reception included an inspirational hypnotist that let us know that what stands in our way is our own preconceived limitations (which we may not be aware of). He proceeded to lead us through a couple of exercises that he used to pick a handful of people as subjects to hypnotize. It was entertaining but less than fulfilling. I guess I’m a skeptic. In his exercises he was looking for good candidates that he called good ‘visualizers.’ People that can take a suggestion and visualize it as being truth. For example, hold your fingers apart and visualize that each is a magnet attracted to the others. The visualizers will find themselves — after coaxing — with their fingers touching. I’m sure it is just my warped view of the world but I didn’t see these people as ‘visualizers’ but more as people more susceptible to suggestion. I would guess they buy a lot of commercialized products.
Anyway, on with the day. After lunch with a co-worker at the House of the Blues — which again was not playing the blues — I headed to the airport. The flight started to load and then they stopped after hearing that Phoenix was shut down due to weather. The people that got loaded sat for 45 minutes on the plane until the rest of us got loaded after Phoenix gave a green light. Unfortunately, on the way to the runway Phoenix closed again and we sat on the tarmac for an hour.
This led, as you can imagine, to everyone missing their connecting flights in Phoenix. Initially we were naive enough to think our connecting flights would be delayed as well but this was hopeful thinking. Once in Phoenix we were led to a line to wait another hour for new flight info. I actually never made it through this line, a woman finally came around with a phone number to use which led to my new flight at 7:30am the next morning. (This is better than the large group of Anchorage bound people that were being initially being told they could get home next Wednesday — it is spring break.) We were also told that no hotel rooms are available — not sure how true this is but it is spring training time here as well.
I finally got to eat some dinner around midnight. Thankfully there is a Paradise Bakery that is open 24hours here. They were quite popular.
So now I wait afraid to sleep in case I don’t wake up in time for my flight. See you soon.
My flight leaves at 7:30am
Sounds like your conference was worthwhile and you got to see a bit of the architecture in Vegas. Cool. You’re right about the hotel rooms.
Did you feel a little like Tom Hanks in Airport as you spent the night on your little 2-seat bench ?
Did you ever get any sleep that night?