This is a blend of personal and
professional. I traveled to Seattle WA for a 10 trip for the Unified Communications TAP Summit. The event would be held in Bellevue for a week, and we arrived the prior week to walk through the labs and identify any significant problems.
The trip went well overall but it was quite long and then we hit Thursday night and Friday morning - the Wind Storm. They closed the 520 bridge due to the high winds on Thursday night and we woke up on Friday to no power. I was struggling to figure out how to get a shower in the pitch black apartment, thankfully one of the other guys was thinking and we all got to shower by the light of the laptop!
We proceeded to the event center with every intersection acting as a 4-way stop, not bad at 7:30 in the morning but at 9:30 our colleagues reminded us that we had to turn our apartment keys in by 11:00 am, not what we had thought. So we returned to the apartment, packed and dropped of the keys while we noticed that we were very low on gas. Pulling into the gas station there was no power and no operating gas pumps. The owner noted that the other 2 or 3 stations in the area were without power and that 2 other stations had run out of gas. This felt like the days of the gas price increase when everyone filled up before the price increased.
So we are low on gas and decide we will go back to Bellevue as parts of downtown had power. Not knowing the city that well we were not finding a gas station. We stopped at the Bellevue library and parked in the garage there. We then walked about 10 blocks to the 1 gas station known to be open and operating, but they no longer had any gas cans and the line was wrapped around the block.
So now we are in a jam, a car with no gas and we need to get to the airport. So... we unloaded the luggage and walked 5 blocks (after walking back those other 10) to the bus station. We waited for an hour for the bus and rode for another hour to the airport. Our flights were on time and then I had to go walk to the rental agency and explain the situation. Thankfully the attendant was polite and only asked questions to clarify the location of the vehicle. I now await my rental bill.
At the airport they were having partial power outages and then some ground radar problems (or so I overheard). Then the flight from Seattle to San Francisco was delayed, delayed with no estimated time. Fortunately I did not overreact, I was close, and while sitting and thinking they announced my San Francisco flight with a gate change. Turns out they had multiple flights and the earlier one was waiting on a plane from Portland which was also having storms. I was fortunate to catch my flight and just barely make my connecting flight.
While the flights were never a real issue, the amount of stress and concern on this trip ranks up with my other worst flight which involved Chicago and ice delaying me 1 full day to London. Thankfully neither of these flight resulted in sleeping on a plane or in the terminal. I have to say that I would consider this one of the worst simply for the emotional drain it took on me. I have never been so happy to be home.
