Dirty South

Time: none
Distance: none

A night after having some good time at Duckworth's with Compton, Matt, Jenna, Meagan, Simmons and a special someone, I awoke still needing to pack for my trip to New Orleans. I would be attending the Fleet Feet Winter Conference on behalf of Orthaheel Sandals. I got up with plenty of time to pack, shower and navigate the morning traffic to the airport.

Wait a minute. What's that white stuff?

Wow, the weatherdudes were right, it snowed. A quick check of my flight told me that I had been rebooked for a 12:50 departure and would be flying through Detroit. Detroit! Now that's efficient.

This would give me time to run if I wanted to aggravate my achilles slipping at toe off or I could pass on exercise and take the water paired with coffee. I watched the news on the morning commute and checked Delta.com every so often.

Short story long, I made it to New Orleans after having to sprint through the Detroit airport. The flight from Charlotte left late and according to my rebooking I would only have 30 minutes in the upper Midwest if everything went perfect. I landed at like 3:17 for a 3:30 departure. Yikes!

I don't know if you've ever been to the Detroit airport but it was designed by a schmuck. He took all creativity out of building a huge megaplex and decided a single hallway would be most efficient. My arrival gate was A10 and I had to get to A49 which was, no joke, over a half mile away. I ran and ran and ran. Good thing I'm kinda fit and now healthy because I made my flight and found my seat at the very back of the plane. Last row next to the bathrooms. Coincidentally, I was in the nose bleeds back with the GM of Craft/Karhu (Meagan's boss).

Once in New Orleans I cabbed it to the hotel, set up our booth space and had a great dinner on Magazine St. with my boss. We watched the FBS National Championship Game drinking local pints and chatting with the locals. Usually I'm in a foul mood when I don't get to run, but today was busy enough to keep me focused on other things. Plus that trek through the airport would count in Billy Shue's Athleticore.com log.