Philly - Pt. 1 - Sep 2009

Day 1 in Philly: This Little Piggy Went Home to Get Comfortable Shoes

My stay in Philly thus far:

• My trip starts by waking Lea early so that I can spend a little time with her. She wakes up in a great mood and I love being able to spend those moments with her. Plus, I get to leave knowing that Tad will be the one to deal with tonight’s after-effects of the early morning wake-up. Lea gives me lots of hugs and kisses when I leave, but is not upset. This makes me incredibly happy, because it lessens the guilt. It also makes me feel like (a) she’s secure in the knowledge that I’ll always be there for her, even if I’m not physically present, and (b) she’s secure in Tad’s ability to be a great dad to her, regardless of whether I’m there or not.
• I get to the airport and navigate security without incident, despite not having flown since January of 2007 and wondering if I’m going to be the idiot who forgets to do something critical while going through security, thus holding up the whole line or causing a major security breach.
• Within two minutes of going through security, I realize that my feet are not accustomed to anything other than flip flops and sneakers. Exhibits A and B to support this are my aching, swollen feet that have big bloody blisters on the back. EasySpirit comfortable shoes, my ass. Thus begins my quest for BandAids. Three stores later, and it becomes clear that there’s not a BandAid to be had in RDU today. I suck it up and hobble on to the flight.
• The airplane is a small commuter jet, with only two seats on each side. I have carefully selected a window seat for myself so that I can snooze a bit. I just can’t sleep in an aisle seat – I feel too exposed. Unfortunately, there’s a very nice looking man sitting in my window seat with his eyes closed, leaving me with the aisle. I’m now left with the predicament of whether to: (a) attempt to wake up the man, make him unbuckle his seat belt, move his bag from under the seat, and hold everyone up while I do this, or (b) suck it up and take the aisle, relinquishing my cozy nap spot. Looks like my flight will be nap-less.
• I arrive in Philly, where circumstances force me to immediately turn my attention to my feet, which, in addition to being blistered are now swollen into little sausages due to the trauma and the flight. I adopt a strange sort of walk where I curl my toes under and try to talk on the balls of my feet without walking on tiptoes. I’m confident that I will develop hammer toes as a result of this technique, but I don’t care – it’s enabling me to move, albeit not without pain. Thankfully, Philly is not suffering from the same BandAid shortage as Raleigh-Durham.  I patch up my wounded feet as best I can in a cramped bathroom stall and limp to the baggage claim, where all the signs tell me my bag will be arriving at Carousel F.
• I wait. And wait. And wait. And wait. Finally, there’s an announcement that my bag will be coming out on Carousel E. I head on over and proceed to wait some more. Finally, I spot a sign over Carousel J saying that my flight’s bags were, in fact, delivered there. Somehow, I’m the only one who didn’t notice the change, because there’s my poor little bag, circling all by itself.
• Off to find a taxi, I step outside and realize it’s about 90 degrees here. What’s the point of traveling north if it’s still going to be hotter than hell? My taxi cab has a huge plastic divider between me and the driver, which also means that there’s a huge plastic divider between me and the air conditioning. Fortunately, they’ve provided me with a very lovely little fan that blows hot air directly on my face. It’s the little touches like this that are making me love Philadelphia already.
• I arrive at the hotel where they let me check in early. As I enter my room, I’m hit with a blast of frigid air. Someone has set the thermostat to 57 degrees (seriously). In the course of 5 minutes, I’ve experienced complete weather extremes.
• I attend a couple of sessions, and the conference is great. At the end of the day, I go down to the cocktail hour schmooze-fest that I feel obligated to attend. Because I’m horrible at just going up to random people, I spend the whole time talking to a nice guy from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Sustaining a conversation with one person is much easier than trying to initiate conversations with many different people, even though I can’t particularly relate anything he’s saying. He’s nice enough, but he’s an economist, business type – and to be fair, I’m not sure he got where I was coming from either.
•  After an appropriate amount of time, I bail and head up to the room, where the shoes that I’m coming to view as torture devices are the first things to go. Out come the flip flops and jeans, and I head out to walk around Philadelphia.