Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Missed my flight--AGAIN!

Damm it here I go again. The ticket said New York to Milan on Delta so I went to Delta and was suppose to be at Alitalia. So I missed the flight and ended up getting on a plane to Milan through Paris meaning that I would miss most of my meetings for the day. Ah but at least I got to quickly go into the city to have breakfast and see if I could find those bikes that my boss keeps talking about "Yeah it cost something like 40 gazzilion dollars for them to do that" See the pictures I am not lying. Yes this is the exciting life of an ad sales executive/pro bike racer. You are always on airplanes visiting clients and you have to drag your bike everywhere because sometime before 9 a.m. you hope to get a decent ride in.

As usual I traveled to Italy with my trusty sidekick Steve. Thanks to the fact that the Euro is at 1.50 we get to share rooms again. Steve loves that. Apparently I steal the covers a lot. Yes that's right when they say two beds in Europe it really means two mattresses next to each other and one blanket. It's at times like this that its good to be the boss. 5 days and 15 meetings that was the goal. And a little riding each day to keep the supless in the legs as the French say. It went something like this. Friday arrive and missed the first meeting, Steve picked me up after the meeting and we rushed to our dinner in Bassano. Oh yeah nothing like a red eye in coach, no sleep since I was sandwiched between two sumo wrestlers from the mid west. Have I mentioned the glamorous life of an ad exec/pro bike racer? Then drive 300 Km to the dinner, have dinner and drive 100 K to the hotel. 40 hours later with no sleep and I'm in bed. And so is Steve. We managed to ride both days on the weekend. First day we did 3 hours and Steve kept bitching about how his ass hurt. What a freaking wimp I'm thinking. The next day he figures out that his tights had no chamois. Jesus you mean you put the things on and hopped on the bike for 3 hours and only the next day did you figure it out that you didn't have chamois. This is when I remind myself that yes ad sales is the perfect job for C students. Sunday we ride, Monday we are back on the road for a meeting in a different town with a GPS that keeps getting us lost. Actually the GPS doesn't get us lost but for some reason I keep missing the turns. We call our good friend Steve (lots of Steve's) at the GPS company and offer some suggestions such as a sexier voice on the unit or maybe when we miss a turn instead of saying re-calculating it can say "Your a f--c-- idiot turn around" After three or four calls to Steve he stops finding it amusing. I still think its pretty funny, but Steve reminds me that this guy really does pay for our salaries. Oh yeah OK.

During the week we do 15 meetings where we seem to spend an awful lot of time explaining to people whom we’ve seen a few times already that indeed we are not editors but are on the ad sales side and only manage to get on the bike twice for an hour each time. But I (sorry Steve -- we) did clock 250 Km/Hour (that's 153 Miles Per Hour for the metric challenged) on the Autostrada. Oh the good life. Friday comes around Steve hops on a plane back home to see his wife and I head to the mountains to pretend that I am Lance Armstrong in 28 days. Monday I'm back in the US walk into the house the neighbors kid calls me daddy and my own kid walks right by me without even looking. Life is good.