New Bar Set for Travel Blunders

With all the travel that I do, at least once every six months I do something stupid that ends up costing me money. In the past this has included buying non-refundable tickets for jobs that were not quite firmed up that ended up being canceled, making non-refundable reservations for the wrong date, making non-refundable reservations for flights leaving at PM when I thought I was doing AM.

I have now raised the bar to a whole new level that has me wondering what can possibly outdo it.

Yesterday I was scheduled to give a talk to a group of asset managers on the topic of business succession - a good opportunity for me to troll for clients and referrals to clients. Got up in the morning to the airport, fly to Phoenix. I'm there in plenty of time. I go to the USAir Club and do some work. Grab a bite to eat and then head to grab a cab to go to my meeting. I give the name of the hotel and convention center where the meeting is to the cab driver. He looks at me strangely and say, "I don't know of anything named that in Phoenix - Las Vegas yes but not Phoenix."

I suddenly have a sinking feeling. I call my contact. "Ya were at the Mandalay Bay in LAS VEGAS." My talk is schedule a hour and a half from now. After thinking I would have to totally cancel, my contact calls me up and let's me know that there are almost hourly flights from Phoenix to Las Vegas. I'm worried about getting back to Albuquerque that night. I get on line and sure enough I can catch a flight in an hour and catch another flight home from Las Vegas that evening. I book the flight. Go to the kiosk and pick up my boarding pass and I'm at my place to give my talk just an hour and half late. My contact had moved the schedule around to accommodate me.

Other than eating a bit of crow for the 'planning' professional screwing up the planning and being out of pocket many hundreds of dollars to book the extra flights, the presentation went quite well.

Now what can I think of to top this?