I’ve been traveling for years and I had various adventures but I have never done this. I guess there is always a first.

As I said in my previous post, I came to Orlando for MGX and one of Craig Mundie’s demo, which I think went really well. I woke up this morning, after having got some rest from the panic of the previous days,and checked out at around 11.10am. I don’t really like Orlando so I didn’t have anything to do. Instead of wondering around, I decided to go to the airport. I was there at around 11.30am and checked in directly for my 6.30pm flight. That’s 7 hours before the flight’s departure!!!! I went to the gate and plugged my laptop to the power so I could work while waiting.

I started working on a chapter of the book that Jim, Ian, and I are writing and then moved on to clean up my email. I got so into the groove of working that completely lost track of time. Somehow I thought my flight was at 6.50 so at 6.30 I went to ask if there was a delay because I wasn’t seeing any action. Their response… “oh, are you at 6A? We paged you. The flight is gone. You missed it.” Indeed, they had just closed the airplane’s doors and I could see my “ride” back to Seattle leaving 🙁

I was only few meters away and I still didn’t realize what was happening. I guess it didn’t help that I had my back to the gate while looking at my laptop’s screen.

I will have to cancel lots of meetings for tomorrow now 🙁

This is turned out to be one of those days. Oh man!