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.
We
were also cleared to take Charly on the planned girls’ trip to Orlando. I had booked tickets and hotel back in
December. When she was admitted less 10
days before the trip, I started wondering what I’d do with the tickets. The oncology nurse I spoke with commiserated with
me. “This was supposed to be an okay
time to plan travel - now that we are done with the hard chemo and in
maintenance! What do I do? Should I cancel the trip?” I complained