Tales of a Traveling Salesgirl - part 2

Waikiki, HI - October 2006

Our office had presented a team course for staff in Hawaii.  Technically, it was our boss who did the presenting.  However, a few months earlier, I closed a really profitable, real uncommon, 6-figure sale.  I went into Gordon's office, slapped the invoice for the sale onto his desk and told him he needed to take OUR team to Hawaii for the course.  He agreed, and we brought the entire team to work the course in Hawaii.  

This is a rare event for our office.   We even got our own rooms so we could bring our spouses (at our own expense, of course).  On the first day of the trip, Gordon had a 3-hour team meeting, then we had the course from 6am to 5pm on the next two days.  On the last day of the trip we were scheduled to fly home at 10pm, but we had the day to explore the island.

Sean is not an early-morning guy.  It didn't matter if there was a 4-hour time change to his benefit.  I woke up at 6am, and decided to go sit on the balcony to read a book in the morning sun.  I sat on a lawn chair, with my feet stretched out and balanced on the balcony railing.  The ocean was making a lovely swooshing noise in the background, and my book was excellent.  A warm, humid breeze blew the smell of exotic flowers and ocean.  At one point, I realized that the breeze seemed to be picking up.  I paused reading, thinking, "Wow, the breeze is blowing so hard, it feels like the building is swaying."  Which, when you think about it, is ridiculous.  Breezes don't blow hard enough to move a building.  

Right when this thought crosses my mind, Sean ripped open the curtains to the balcony windows and snaps at me, scowling "Don't you think you should come inside now?!"  

Apparently, we just experienced an earthquake.  They are remarkably quiet if you are sitting outside.  Hearing my co-workers' accounts of the quake, it was quite noisy inside the hotel.  

I can't remember the magnitude of the quake, but it knocked out power to the entire island of Oahu.  The elevators and for a while the water (which means the toilets) didn't work.  Eventually, they did get the water working, but the power remained out all day.  I asked Sean if we should be concerned about a Tsunami or not.  We were somewhere in the double-digits for our hotel floor, and figured it was higher than the ground floor.  If a wave actually reached the hotel that was that high, we figured it would cover the entire island and at that point, it was pointless to try and find higher ground.  So we chatted to our hotel room neighbors as we hung out on the balcony.  

My friend & co-worker, Amy, has a cop husband (Mike), who immediately packed up Amy and drove to the high ground.   I guess that must be all that emergency training kicking in.  Unfortunately, Amy was splitting the car rental with Valinda and her husband, Dan.  Valinda and Dan were in the hotel room a floor above us.  While Amy and Mike were fleeing for high ground, Sean and I were chatting about tsunami potential with Valinda and Dan.  Amy still gets grief from Valinda for abandoning them at the hotel.  

Thankfully, there was no tsunami.  But the entire day was a bust.  We didn't dare check out of the hotel room, because flights leaving Oahu were being cancelled left and right.    There wasn't anywhere to go as a tourist, because there was no power.  All the shops and places that ran off credit cards were gated off. Proprietors would only allow one customer inside the store at a time, and only could take cash transactions.  Somebody from the group stood in line at the nearest ABC store and bought a loaf of bread and peanut butter so we could all have lunch.   By dinner time, the hotel had pulled out BBQ grills and was charging an enormous amount for hamburgers and hot dogs - eaten by candlelight in their restaurant.  

Random knowledge shared by another employee’s husband - the hotel won't charge you for drinking the $4 bottled water in your room during an emergency, and they keep emergency supplies like flashlights in the mini bar.

A couple hours before our flight, we decided to trust Delta’s assurances that we would be flying out that night.  We returned our car rentals to a completely dark parking lot after driving through streets with non-operational stoplights. For the first time that day, we saw evidence of electricity at the airport.  Thankfully, we were able to take off about 10:30 that night and return home on the first flight leaving the island since the quake that morning.

Gordon was quite thrilled that he had left the evening before, missing the entire adventure.

Atlanta - March 2008

This story is a pretty interesting one.  It also contains some of those cringe-worthy moments that come from realizing too late the filter between brain and mouth hasn’t been engaged.  

This was a stupid trip.  It was my first time working a booth in a convention hall.  I have since learned much about running a booth, but at the time I was clueless.  Somebody else was in charge of the planning, and I was just told where to go, and what days I would be working.  It was at a point in our company when we were collaborating with a group out of Arizona.  Gordon was being heavily courting to be the dean of their educational organization in Arizona.  The "powers that be" wanted someone from our organization to work with people from their group at their booth at the 2008 Hinman Dental meeting meeting.  That's how I ended up sharing a hotel room with Shayna from Arizona.

I had been traveling for work for a few years by this time, and I was confident in my abilities to sell, even though I’d never worked a booth before.  By the end of the second day, I felt we had been doing successfully, but my feet were killing me, and my voice was starting to wear out.

Shayna and I were so tired, we decided to get Chinese dinner from the restaurant outside the hotel and return to our room.  The two nights previous involved social schmoozing events, later nights, and a lot more alcohol on the part of Shayna and the other Arizona people.  Shayna and I had just put up our feet and started to read what exactly we were supposed to do in order to pack up and return ship our booth the next day. It was about 8pm and a storm was building outside.  I remember exclaiming, “I LOVE thunderstorms!” to Shayna and getting up to pull open the curtains to look out at the lightening.  Shayna agreed and got up to look out the window with me.  

It took a second or two looking out the window to register that I was looking at an orange construction barrel flying at eye level of our 3rd floor window.  I faintly stated, "We should probably get away from the window", and I start walking away from the window.  At the same time, Shayna starts screaming and runs for the hotel room door.  I know it sounds hokey, but a voice in my head clearly stated, "Do NOT open the door."  I rushed after Shayna, reaching the door only seconds behind her.  She succeeded in pulling open the door 2-3 inches, and I placed my hand above the sliding lock over her head and shove the door shut.  The moment she opened the door, there was a "POP" sound as our floor-to-ceiling windows shattered and the room was then filled with a loud roaring noise.  I don't know how I managed to throw a grown woman around, but I grabbed Shayna and shoved her into the bathroom and shut the door.  For one moment, I almost immediately went back out to get my cell phone off my hotel bed.  I stopped myself from opening the door and firmly folded my arms and turned around to lean against the door to prevent me from leaving.  The noise was unbelievable.  It also lasted only moments.  Shayna and I stared at each other – She sitting in the bathtub and me leaning protectively against the bathroom door. I don't think we said a word.  

When the noise stopped, I ran out of the bathroom to grab my phone.  I could see our curtains flapping outside in the breeze.  Car alarms and sirens could be heard from outside.  We stepped up to the edge and surveyed the chaos below.  Billboards and traffic lights had been crumpled like tin foil.  Cars overturned, and debris everywhere.  I start slapping everything into my suitcase, and grabbed the booth orders, because there were credit card numbers on them. Clutching the orders to my chest, I declared, "Grab the orders! There might be looting!"  We quickly gather our stuff to vacate the room.  I turn around to see Shayna kneeling before the mini bar.  "Don't judge me" she declared vehemently, as she thrust both hands into the mini bar and came out with over a half-dozen mini alcohol bottles - the little necks protruding from between the fingers of her hands.  "I REALLY NEED THESE!" She said as she shook her fists-full of bottles at me.

I get on my cellphone to let important people know I was alright.  First, I call Sean.  As usual, it went to voicemail. He doesn't like to answer the phone…it’s kinda annoying.  Then I called my folks. They were happy to hear I was okay, although they hadn't heard anything about the tornado yet in the news.  Finally, I called my boss.  I suspect he initially thought I was exaggerating.  When I told him about our windows and the crumpled billboards and overturned cars, he was amazed at HIS good fortune for leaving earlier that afternoon.  "I have the most amazing luck!  I always seem to leave and just miss things when something major happens. Floods, ice storms, the 9-11 attacks…  I left before the earthquake in Hawaii, and now I missed this!"  This is where I cut him off and said I had to go and hung up on him.  I needed two hands to carry my luggage down the stairs, and I didn't want to help Gordon marvel about Gordon's good fortune.  

Stepping out of our room, the hallway was covered in broken glass from the skylight some 18 stories above us being shattered.  Looking over the atrium balcony, you could see giant planters had been blown across the lobby as if they were made of Styrofoam instead of cement.  Shayna and I passed a gentleman who, for whatever reason, decided to investigate what was going on in the hallway wearing nothing but his tightie whities.  He inquired if we were okay.  We called over our shoulder as we muscled our luggage into the emergency stairwell that our windows were blown out, so we were going to the Hilton.  (Because, obviously, Hilton’s are tornado-proof, unlike the cheap dive we were currently residing).

Upon reaching the lobby level, we were directed by the hotel staff to a lower ballroom with no exterior windows.  There were still tornado warnings in the area.  We remained there for a few hours.  During that time, Shayna chugged the half-dozen bottles that she swiped from the mini bar, she then bummed a couple cigarettes from another evacuee and went to the parking garage to smoke them, and somehow she found someone with a spare Valium.  I thought I was handling everything pretty well, until I did something so stupid, I still cringe when I think about it.  

The executives from the Arizona group were staying at the same hotel.  They were all dressed in their suits & ties.  They stood in a circle and had their arms folded and heads bowed with serious expressions.  I walk up to the group and said, "Are you praying?"  They looked at me, like I was a little crazy, and one of the men asked how I was doing as the rest of the group dispersed to the other side of the room.  

The part that is cringe-worthy is because it had been a serious question. Hello!  They had their arms folded - that's Mormon for "Prayer Time"!   Knowing what I DID know about these guys, I definitely shouldn't have drawn that mental association.  Their religion was strictly for the church of the almighty wallet.  Yet, the tornado apparently rattled me enough to make me forget that and sound like a total rube.

Finally, the hotel staff gave us the "all clear" signal. We did head for the Hilton, where another staff member from Arizona had her own hotel room.  I'm still not clear how it was that I ended up sharing a room with Shayna.  If Shayna had a co-worker at the meeting, shouldn't they have shared a room? Honestly, they worked together! I digress.

The walk over to the hotel was amazing.  All the hotels and buildings in the area had random windows blown out, with curtains blowing in the wind.  All that damage, accomplished in only a few minutes. We tried ordering an additional roll-out bed at the Hilton, but they were out.  I was so tired, I declared that the three of us could share the king-size bed, because I was too tired to care. I passed out after showering to get the glass out of my clothing and hair.  

The conference was cancelled.  Nobody was allowed into the exhibit hall, because the roof had massive damage and broken pipes resulted in a flooded exhibit hall.  Millions of dollars of dental equipment, destroyed.  

When I returned home, I recall finding glass shards in my luggage after I unpacked.  I also gained a reputation as being the girl you don’t want to travel with, as apparently natural disasters occur around me.