It's been a busy week. I've been working in Washington DC for the last 4 days and plan to drive to New York for a couple of days before I fly home. The work bit was a sales conference; a seemingly endless tunnel of PowerPoint slides occasionally fractured by food. My arrival at the hotel was the first of many comedy moments. I checked-in and got my room card but as I walked away from the reception desk the clerk called me back. There was a problem with my credit card! She tried a few times but it was rejected every time. Luckily a colleague was checking in at the same time and he had room for two on his card.
This hotel has an excellent fitness centre and as I expected to be wide awake at 4am every morning I was really looking forward to getting back into a training routine. Tuesday morning arrived and as expected I was bright as a button at 4am. I got my running gear on and made my way to the gym only to be redirected to reception to be given the bad news that the gym was closed for refurbishment. But, there was an alternative! They had picked one of each machine type and stuffed them into a spare meeting room. As the only one up at that ridiculous time of the morning there the treadmill was all mine.
The comedy continued... The treadmill display warned of an error, something to do with "speed system", of course I rebooted in the hope that the problem would fix itself. It seemed to so I cranked up the machine to start my 8 mile run.
Not long into the run it seemed as if the belt was slipping. Initially I thought it was me, after all it was stupid-o-clock in the morning but as I ran I realised that it was the belt and as I approached 2 miles the treadmill gave up and returned to the error that I had started with. It was far too cold to run outside so I spent an hour on a bike to make up the time.
The remainder of my stay was uneventful and on Thursday evening my short vacation began and I transferred to a hotel closer to the city. After a few drinks in a bar close to the office I got a lift to my new hotel, or so I thought. I was totally distracted by gadgets in the car; I loved the reversing camera, I wanted to reverse all the way there but apparently the Police frown on that kind of thing. And the GPS voice was a lot of fun - we changed it to French and it sounded fantastic... we had no idea where we were going but we didn't get there in style. Speaking of not getting there I was dropped off at a Marriott hotel on the right street, shame it was the wrong Marriott! The receptionist asked me to spell my name three times, that's always trouble. Luckily the real hotel was less than half a mile away.
Today was DC day. The highlight was listening to a survivor recall his experiences in Germany during the WW2 at the Holocaust museum. It was a very moving experience and I think everyone in the room felt privileged to be there and inspired by his courage, and his capacity to forgive and for keeping his faith in mankind through it all. The rest of the museum was fascinating and thought provoking, well worth a visit but it did put me right off my lunch!
Tomorrow I leave DC for Philadelphia, New York and then home!
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