First quarter is a very busy time for Andrea so I try not to travel. Unfortunately, this year not only am I traveling, for the first trip I’m gone nearly three weeks.

It started out innocently enough: do a one week training course in London. Then, our London business partner was like, hey, if you are in country we should do some customer visits. My one week trip turned into two.

I have to return to Europe for a Users Conference in March, so I figured that if I was there for nearly two weeks, maybe I should swing by Fulda in Germany to touch base with the team there and see if I needed to do anything extra for the conference. Then, another partner of ours landed a deal with the European Space Administration, so I figured, what the heck, I’ll swing by Brussels to see them before I head to London. Welcome to a three week trip.

It gets worse. For the two days after the London training I was going to visit some friends in Lyndhurst for a relaxing weekend. But then we landed some business in Sweden, so why not take a trip there for a meeting? And then, just because it was already so crazy, I decided to visit a friend in Amsterdam for the afternoon on the Saturday while I was in Brussels.

Confused? Perhaps it will get clearer as I manage to write this all down.

Anyway, this note is just to cover the trip from Raleigh to Brussels. You gotta start somewhere.

I should probably start with packing for this trip. There is no way I can take 20 days of clothes (I’m not sure I own 20 days of underwear) so I know I’ll have to do laundry. I figured out the most opportune times to do it, and my laundry critical path was 11 days (i.e. I need 11 days of clothing). That won’t fit in my normal luggage, so I dragged out the massive bag we use for trips when Andrea and I travel together. I’m hoping it won’t be a pain to deal with on the trains and such, but I couldn’t figure out another option.

While I hate commuting through Heathrow, the best way to get to Brussels was to take the daily Raleigh flight on American. Due to Glaxo, there is one flight from RDU to LHR every day. Depending on the time of year, it leaves around 6pm or 7pm and gets to London 12 clock hours later (it’s a seven hour flight with a +5 time difference). I like taking it in January because the planes tend to be empty, and this year American introduced an “economy extra” class that I get access to since I am an elite traveler in their program.

The Raleigh plane is a 767, which has a 2-3-2 layout (from the window: two seats, an aisle, three seats, an aisle, two more seats and then the other window). In the configuration American flies, the front cabin has about 30 or so business class seats, then there is a small, four row economy class section followed by the large economy section toward the rear of the plane. To make the “economy extra” they removed a row from that small section, which left three rows, each with decent legroom.

The flight left at 6pm, and since I was going to be gone for so long I didn’t want to leave my car at the airport. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anyone who could give me a ride, so I called my car service. If I am gone for more than a week and I can get a ride either to or from the airport, it makes sense to hire a car versus parking. Plus, Jeff was in town and needed to go to the airport as well, so that morning Andrea dropped me at the office after picking up Jeff from his hotel, and then we met with James later that afternoon to head to RDU.

James had been running late, so he was driving fast to get us to the airport, and he decided to take the new toll road. Apparently it is heavily patrolled even though it isn’t heavily used, and he got stopped. I thought the officer was going to let him go, but no, he got a ticket for 80 in a 65. (sigh) I felt kinda bad, and I hope it works out for James.

After getting my security grope, I stopped by the Admiral’s Club. For some reason I was unable to choose a seat on the London to Frankfurt leg of the trip, but Karole in the Club was able to get me a decent aisle seat near the front. Not that it really mattered – the trip was less than an hour – but I like knowing where I am sitting. Plus, on the first flight I had a window seat, so she blocked the seat next to me so I had my little two seat section all to myself.

The flight was slightly delayed and while I was sitting there I struck up a conversation with a man named Shaddanke. He had on a Pittsburgh Steelers sweatshirt so we were commiserating about this year’s season. I asked him where he was going and he said India. Believe it or not, he had met a woman online and he was flying there to propose to her. He showed me the ring. Pretty interesting how young people meet up these days.

The rest of the flight was pretty drama-free. There was a bit of action when a group of woman traveling with an infant had some confusion over their seats. The bad part about the economy extra section is that it is the only bulkhead that supports bassinets. The flight attendants had to juggle some other passengers around to accommodate them, and for a second I thought they were going to put someone in the seat next to me and I was going to be pissed. But everything got settled and the flight went smoothly. I didn’t sleep much but at least I was comfortable. I used most of the time to catch up on Doctor Who (minus this year’s Christmas special, which I plan to watch later in the trip).

The transfer at Heathrow was pretty painless as well, but did involve going from Terminal 3 to Terminal 5 and about a mile of walking (no exaggeration). Both myself and my bag arrived in Brussels, and the only real downside was the temperature, which was -10C (14F).