Stormageddon, Part 2

So, apparently this thing that's happened is being dubbed Stormageddon. Cool name. Last I wrote, I had gone through a bunch of crap just to get from Detroit to my hotel in Harrisburg. Well, the craziness that started while I was in Michigan just got even worse as I got to PA.

After getting less than two hours of sleep, I go out to the meeting room to start setting up for the day's presentation. It didn't take long to realize that the banquet staff the night before had booked it home early to avoid too much snow; we had been moved to a room WAY too big for our 35-person seminar and WAY too dirty to have been cleaned after the wedding party who-knows-how-long beforehand. Luckily, one of the waitresses from the restaurant decided to come in and volunteer, even though she had no banquet/event experience. This let us get a pot of coffee brewed.

The day goes by, no participants show up, we cancel the seminar, and I spend the afternoon on the phone with the office to get travel details ironed out. The highways get shut down due to a state of emergency, our flight gets canceled, and, to top it all off, no cab companies in the area are open. We get scheduled for a train from Harrisburg to Philly and I bribe the owner of a cab company to get her and her husband to use their personal 4-wheel drive SUV to get us into town (thanks, Pam!). Before we leave, we find out our train has been canceled, but the next train, over two hours later, is still a 'go.'

We get to the train station and try to pass the time and not freeze too much. I napped while listening to the Fanboy Radio podcast (thanks, Dan) and my presenter caught up with some phone calls. The last train of the night finally comes and we board with the TWO other passengers...on the ENTIRE train. I've always wanted to ride a train long-distance, so I was pretty pleased to get to do this on the company's dime. Amtrak actually has some pretty cushy commuter cars, so it was at least comfortable.

We wait almost an hour at the Philly train station to catch a SEPTA train to the airport, but then find one of the only cabs running in the area instead. Shared the cab with a couple that had been waiting for that train for over two hours, drive down some one-way streets the wrong direction, get turned away from the highway by the National Guard, and finally get to the hotel.

I get two nights at the Hampton Inn and will hopefully get on a direct flight to Seattle tomorrow evening to start my week-long vacation. Time to kick back and get stuff done (we'll see how this website redesign goes...).