I woke up this fine Sunday morning at 5:30am. No, I'm not one of those goofball marathon runners. My trip was longer than 26.2 miles. My trip was over 700 miles, end point being High Point North Carolina, the furniture capitol of the world.

Why? Work. The furniture industry is a strange multi-headed beast that hibernates for most of the year, but for a few weeks crawls out to go to Spring and Fall High Point Market. The reason behind the location goes way back to the industry of the 1800s when the area had the perfect combination of proximity to textile mills and fresh timber. The surrounding cities have names that are familiar if you've ever gone furniture shopping. Thomasville, Asheville, etc.. It just all came together.

So this morning, The bus/train rides to the airport were standard Chicago Public Transit for early Sunday morning, that is to say few and far between. Oh how only 10 hours later I already miss their even limited availability, for I am in the land of people who it would seem are much happier sitting on that nice new couch than going out and doing ANYTHING. On to that in a second.

But first, work travel. Middle seat for the first flight, right in between two quite large people (and those of you who have met me know I take a bit of room myself.) Right behind me? A dad and his two ~6 yr old twin daughters, who must have had a third bowl of chocolate frosted sugar bombs this morning, cause they would not shut up/stop fighting/kicking my seat. One positive thing... at one point one of the little girls says to the other "Stop being such a douchebag!" Leg two of the trip was a 22 min flight via a little Dash-8 prop plane. You know the kind that you just have to walk out to? Yeah. Not the best thing to be in with not so great weather. Take off and landing combined with my shitty McDonalds breakfast burritos and coffee (cause really, who eats anyplace other than McDonalds when you are at an airport?) made for a nice welcome to Piedmont Triangle International.

Many hours later, I have arrived in beautiful downtown High Point NC and check in to what used to be the Best Western, but was bought by someone else a few months ago, and they are in the middle of "renovations" so the place looks shittier than it normally does. Oh, and this is like the first day any kind of cold weather for these folks, so they didn't even have the hot water turned on for the heating units... I walked into my room and the AC had been cranking for awhile and it was like testicles curling up inside and seeking refuge cold.

Seriously, this place hosts a convention that brings in like 100k people a couple times a year, and yet there is nothing to do, and no place to eat. There is one pizza joint within walking distance... Pizza Hut. There are no bars. There is no night life. I'm not kidding... On the visitors web site, the first thing they have listed as an attraction is the worlds largest chest of drawers. In my hotel? 18 analog cable channels (at least TBS and ESPN, so okay, not horrible, right?) It's Sunday, I have nothing else to do, might as well pick up a bottle somewhere and try to watch some sports. *Giant Buzzer Sound* Nope. Blue Laws on top of state run liquor stores that are few and far between. Even if I could walk to one, they wouldn't be open today anyways.

This Yankee needs to go home.

Topic for discussion- Crappy things you've had to do for work.