Making a Point...

            The best part of traveling for a living is all the stories you get to hear from others who travel as well.

            Oh sure, you see a lot of neat places. You meet people, work in interesting situations and build up those frequent flier miles and hotel points. If you fly, you need to drive rental cars and sometimes you get to wheel around in something nice.

            If you really know what you’re doing, you can plan side trips and do something really fun to break up the tedium of working away from home.

            So, yeah, that’s all great. But it’s the stories you hear or events you experience that make the whole thing worthwhile. You’ll be telling and re-telling some of these stories for years, even if they aren’t yours.

            Food fights in airports are memorable, if you happen to see one. Seems like everyone has slept in an airport (some of us more than once). Bar stories come up a lot, as do barstool stories. Bad radio stations, bad food, bad roads and bad manners all get their due. You hear a lot of stories about bad service.

            A minor offering is displayed here. It is named, justly, Making a Point at San Francisco International Airport.

            In the mid 1990s I was working for NASCAR and traveling a fair amount, though mostly by car. We had a race at Redwood Acres Raceway in Eureka, California. Eureka is very close to the California-Oregon border and I was supposed to fly to that event. The plan was to fly through San Francisco changing to a small plane for the hop to an airport near Eureka.

            The plan was wrecked when I arrived in San Francisco and was told the pilots were on strike and there would be no flight to Eureka. The only option was to drive, so I rented a car and made a quick six-hour drive to Eureka.

            The next morning was race day and I overheard the news on the radio that the strike was over. I contacted the airline to be sure my flight was a go only to learn that, as I had left San Francisco voluntarily and not flown on to Eureka, I could not fly back to San Francisco. I’d have to drive the six hours back to the beautiful San Francisco Bay Area.

            And be there in time for my 8 a.m. flight.

            The race ended around 11 p.m. and I had my NASCAR work done around 1 a.m. I returned to the hotel, showered, packed and paid for the room. Then I began driving.

            Had to stop in a tree-line area of the highway to avoid a doe and three little fawns that were standing on the road, you know, with nothing better to do. I finally had to get out of the car and yell, “Bambi, get the kids out of here!” in order to get them to make room on the highway for me and my rental car.

            It was a struggle to stay awake, but I did make it to the exciting confusion that is the SF International Airport in time for my flight. Of course, getting on the plane was another matter entirely.

            Does anybody remember the Unabomber? He blew some stuff up in those years. Had folks on edge, especially here in California and, yep, especially in the luxurious San Francisco International Airport.

            Enter Mr. Lucky.

            Keep in mind I was then working on my 27^th hour without sleep. My state of mind was a little irritated to begin with because of the pilots strike. And top it off with the fact that I was a Southern Californian dealing with Northern Californians who had done me wrong.

            So when an overly obnoxious airport guy told me I would not be allowed to take two bags on the plane, due to the Unabomber scare, I got a little heated. The conversation was not going well, from my side. I argued that other airports were not making that rule and he said, I’ll never forget it because he opened up the most favorite line I’ve ever come up with, he said, “This is San Francisco, We do not operate like other airports.”

            To which I replied, “I see you allow women to carry a purse along with their carry-on baggage. Well, certainly in this town, a man is entitled to carry a purse. This,” I said gesturing to my briefcase, “is my purse.”

            And he let me on the plane with both my computer bag and my purse.

            In closing, let me say that I actually get along well with airport and airline folks. They have a hard job and they mostly do it well. But I was right, he was wrong, and he knew it.

            For once.

            Thanks for reading.