This is a guest blog by the husband.
Yesterday I had to take a day trip to Washington (D.C., not the state, though I wouldn't put it past work to ask me to do a day trip to the latter) to attend some meetings at a client site. I hate travel for work because I don't like how much time it takes, I don't care about hotel points or airline miles or fancy meals and I don't like being away from the wife. Work has been bugging me to travel so I thought a day trip was a good compromise. It's a long day since I got up before 5 AM and I wouldn't be home until 9:30 at night (and I would work a 9-5 day at the client's office) but at least I didn't have to be away for the night and I could travel light.
I like to cut it close at the airport but I got there with 10 minutes to spare so I thought I'd use the restroom before I boarded the plane. I go into a stall to hang my bag, proceed to do my business (just a little number one) and as I zip up my pants, the zipper pull come clean off my pants and flies into the toilet. I probably stood there for a minute deciding what to do since of course I didn't have another pair of pants as I wasn't staying over the night. Nothing was ripped or anything so I thought I could maybe fix it good enough where at least my fly wouldn't be wide open all day. That led to me making a tough decision.
Yep, I rolled up my sleeve and stuck my hand in the toilet and pulled out my zipper. After several minutes of washing my hands and the zipper, I went back into the stall and attempted to fix my pants. That did not work. At all. There was no way to get it back on there so that was a waste of time. After another minute of trying to figure out what do, I considered super glue (really) and then I thought maybe the gift store would have safety pins. Thankfully they did so I bought them and went back to the bathroom. This did not go well.
Getting the fly to close enough while not having a big pin sticking out was trickier than I thought. It was made worse when I look down and there is blood on my khaki pants right on the fly. My fingers don't have a ton of feeling in the tips due to carpal tunnel surgery years ago so I didn't know I had pricked myself until I saw the blood. After cleaning that up so it wasn't noticeable, I heard an announcement saying my flight was boarding and then I hear my name being called. At this point I have one pin in that barely keeps my fly closed but I go running like an idiot where the guy at the gate laughs and tells me that they're backed up boarding so I have a few minutes. Then why did you announce you're closing the cabin doors?
Once I got to DC I went back to the bathroom and tried to fix it up a little with only minor success. I looked for a place to buy pants but by this point I had to catch a taxi anyway so I just went to the client. Thankfully I got there first and went to the bathroom where I could sit down and do a better job. At least I got it so it looked closed, though if you looked closely you could see a little silver of the pins in places. The only bad part of that was that to go to the bathroom the rest of the day, I had shimmy my pants halfway down to do my business. That wasn't fun at all.
No one said anything to me but I'm sure some people saw and wondered what the heck was wrong with me. To top off my bad day, it took me forever to walk to the Metro station because graduations were getting out and the sidewalks were clogged with elderly folks taking up the entire width of the sidewalk. When I got the train station, the first machine wouldn't take my credit card so I had to wait in line again where I bought my ticket. I got to catch the train but there's no Blue line in that station. What the hell? Turns out there's two stations with similar names but one is West and one is North and all I remembered was the main name so of course, I went to the wrong one. I exit the station, walk to the right one and catch my train. The train got delayed by some backed up trains at the Pentagon and the AC did not appear to be working. I finally get off the train at the airport where I realized they charged me $3.10 to enter and exit the same station when I made my mistake. The exit fare machine only took cash - $1s and $5s - none of which I had. I went to the attendant to see what to do but thankfully she just took my ticket and let me exit. I pretty much looked like an idiot the entire day.
Then my next dilemma was whether my pins would set off the metal detector. I decided to go for it and of course, the millimeter wave scanner sees something so they pat me down (but on the back, which didn't make any sense). At least I didn't have to explain that I had pins holding my pants together, although I'm sure the people reviewing the scans got a good laugh (since laughing at small wieners all day probably gets old).
Lastly, my flight was delayed over an hour so that was fun. Thankfully I got home at 10:30 PM where we watched the Bruins win in 2OT (blech). This is why I hate travel for work.
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