First night in Dallas was a wash, literally. About 9:30 local time, a flash flood warning started crawling across every local television channel. By 10:00 pm the lightning was crackling and the thunder was shaking the hotel walls. I opened up the sliding glass door to take a look and it was dumping rain, I mean downpour. Loud and cold, the storm kept up well into this morning when I got out of bed around 6:15. Lightning still lighting up the morning sky. It was pretty wild, welcome to Texas right? Monday morning feels like Seattle in the early spring, 56 degrees and misty rain with dark dark clouds. And along with the weather comes the tired that ensues from every west coast eastbound travel. The time difference… even though I attempted to be in bed at my regular west coast hour, the morning came earlier than desired as the 6ish here is really 4ish at home, so I’m pooped, dog tired, jet lagged, and well honestly, home sick. Right??? I’ve been gone 24 hours and already wish I was on my own little couch in my little apartment with my friends and dogs and my kiddo. Maybe it’s just the state of mind, I’m not really all here and well, I hope I can find the rest of me soon. Business travel needs to focus on business, and not my blog or the personal sides of my life.
Two bad cups of black coffee from the 2nd floor cafeteria and it’s on. It’s been a fairly busy morning in the Dallas office. Meeting people, shaking hands, having their day to day work dissected in white boards and documentation. It’s all pretty boring and I’m having a hard time staying focused. It’s not that it isn’t interesting, it’s just not something I haven’t seen before, or helped develop in a former business life. Nothing eye opening or even worth my trip out here. Aside from making an attempt to catch up with an old friend here in Texas, I probably could have done this from anywhere, preferably my living room. Day ended a little earlier than I had previously thought it would, my peer here in Dallas bailed about 3:30 thanks to the onset of flu like symptoms. Of course, no one wants to think it may be swine flu, but with it going around like crazy, I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest. Back to the hotel by 5:00 pm and made arrangements with my friend I hadn’t seen in at least 15 years, to meet up for dinner with her and her husband Scott.
By 6:20 pm we were off to dinner, in the rain and bad GPS directions on her Blackberry. Drove for what felt like 30 minutes through various parts of Dallas that had all 3 of us thinking this was probably not the best part of town to be stopping for a meal. We passed taqueria after taqueria (Spanish for ‘Taco Shop’) looking for a restaurant to sit down and catch up. Street after street, the deeper we got into this area of Dallas, the more uncomfortable we all began feeling. Of course, we laughed it off, not wanting each other to know that we knew, this was all wrong. After a couple of turns and heading back towards the freeway, we stumbled upon a restaurant that was just like the one we had originally intended on heading to. Finally, 50 minutes into our tour of what I would call “all of the places in Dallas to not drive a Saab and be white in” we were walking into dinner.
Had an awesome meal, consisting of my consistent Mexican order of Pollo enchiladas en mole, a tamales and 3 bottles of Pacifico. The food was outstanding, probably because of the 3 pints I had with it, but the conversation was even better. I’ve known Emily for most of my life. And like she said at one point in the evening, and I concur, “I don’t remember a time not knowing you”. We probably haven’t seen each other since early on in high school, so it’s been at least 15 years. We had a lot of catching up to do. Time is an interesting thing, and friendship is one of those wonderful parts of life that is not eclipsed by it. Although it had been more than a decade since we last laughed with one another, you would never have known it. The time a part was like a blink of the eye, with a whole lot of living in between. We shared as many stories as we could of where we’d been and done and reminisced about times we’d had growing up at church camp and hanging out. After about 2 hours of laughing our asses off and full of food and adult beverages, I asked for the check with every intention of picking up this tab we had. I snuck my credit card to the waitress before she could even present the bill, as Emily attempted to do the same. Our waitress spun back to the register before Emily could even get a word out, preventing her attempt to do exactly what I had planned. We laughed about it for a few moments before the waitress returned to my table to hand me my card and in a very serious, and not so pleasant voice said “it’s declined”. She put her hands on her hips and looked me in the face as I asked her to say that again. “It’s declined”, she said again, and in shock and embarrassment I quickly reached for my iPhone to log into my bank account and see what the heck was going on. Meanwhile, Emily yells out “Perfect” and with a huge smile hands the waitress her card. Exactly what I expected to see on my banks website, plenty of money in both of my accounts, I turned my card over and began dialing the customer service number. The conversation with the banker on the phone took about 10 minutes as they recounted every charge in the last 3 days and explained my card was flagged for fraud due to the 2 bad cups of $1.62 coffee I had purchased from the 2nd floor cafeteria earlier that day. Apparently, small out of state purchases within hours of each other raises a red flag. Of course, there was no call directly to me to ask if I was traveling but you would assume that before shutting off my card, they would have seen the hotel, the rental car, the other charges that should tip off any “fraud specialist” that I was traveling! Of course, I mentioned this to the “banker” on the phone as recounted each of the previous 3 days worth of charges, including my hotel, my rental car, my baggage charge with Continental. “ Seriously”, I said to him, “doesn’t that list of charges pretty much tell you that I’m out of town??” He apologized and got me back up and running. I was fairly annoyed that I couldn’t pay for dinner, and convinced Emily and Scott that we needed to go somewhere else for drinks, my treat.
Rather than continuing our tour of “places not to be driving a Saab and be white” we headed back to my hotel bar to watch the rest of the Monday Night Football game and have some more beverages. After a couple drinks and some very entertaining college football discussion (which almost led to a brawl thanks to my Boise State sweatshirt and a redneck Florida fan), we said goodnight and they headed home. Isn’t friendship amazing at times? I’m reminded how blessed my life has been to have people in it, that no matter time or distance, there are certain people who find their way back to us, and it’s the same as it ever was. Awesome. I’ve commented many times how there are few things left in life that amaze us, or me, and this is specifically as case of one of them. I hope that this friendship continues without the years of contact but am sure if it is 10 plus years until the next time, the next time will be as awesome as this time was. To Scott and Emily, thanks for dinner and the tour of bad Dallas! Even more so, for simply being awesome. Here’s to next time!
Guess this trip isn’t really a total wash after all…
Stay Blessed-
Post script-
Started this post on Monday morning only to complete it now, Tuesday 1:00 pm Central Time
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