For those of you who saw “Up and Away” – the George Clooney movie that earned him an Oscar nomination earlier this year – you know it’s a story of an HR corporate type trying to hit his ten million mile mark (that’s for air miles for those of you who don’t play this game). Anyway – a good portion of the storyline is about him training up a new colleague – a smart kid just out of school who doesn’t know the first thing about being a road warrior. All through the movie Clooney makes business travel look simple. It’s not.
Chicago (Monday mid-day). My flight leaves nearly two hours late while we sit on the tarmac waiting for a part to arrive. I know I only have a three hour connection in Shanghai, and so I pray for a strong tailwind. Tuesday late-afternoon local time, we arrive in Shanghai. There was no tailwind, I have only an hour to get my 100 pounds of luggage, get through customs proving I haven’t smuggled in raw meat, and transfer my luggage to another terminal darn near on the other side of the city. The Shanghai airport in Pudong is huge – and you could fit the county where I grew up in the space between Terminal 1 and Terminal 2. But I am an eternal optimist, and so I hit the ground at a dead run. Customs’ Immigration clearance drags like cold molasses. And then there’s the signage. It has been over a year since I’ve been through this airport, so I don’t have my ‘system’ down. And the signage is terrible – somewhere between non-existent and terrible. With all the life I have in me (after a 15 hr flight extended by another 2hrs trapped waiting for a part to arrive), I start my run. It’s more like a zig-zag, because I have no idea where the heck I’m going and every uniformed individual I ask for directions gives me a different answer. (Where’s GEORGE when I need him?!) So I finally make it… breathless, in a bad way, to Terminal 2. And, of course, wouldn’t you know… my flight has been cancelled. But there’s another flight. Another airline. And yep – you know it… back in Terminal 1 (where I started from) that departs in like 45 minutes. So I race back, negotiate a flight change in this delicate dance of Mandarin (them) and hand signals and positive/reassuring voice tones (me), and just barely barely make it on the flight to Dalian.