The New Jersey Chronicles: Part III

The Return! (dun, dun, duuuuuuun)

Originally, my flight was supposed to be leaving back out of Newark Airport on Wednesday evening. Well, since we kind of lost the first day to "travel funk" and none of us were particularly productive, Matt asked us if we'd mind staying one more night, so that we had ALL of Wednesday to work. We all agreed and Matt set to changing our flight plans. The only thing they had available the next day out was at 8:00am. Oh, and the four of us minus Tanny were flying out of Laguardia.

Tanny had his own problems. In the end, he had to take a train from Newark to Philly to catch his flight out (the connecting flight was in Newark).

So we all worked on Wednesday, and the plan was as follows:

- at 2am, we'd stop working. Tim would drive Tanny to Newark in the car I rented from there, drop the car off and catch some "zzz"s. Matt stayed to finish up some of his projects. Robert and I went back to the hotel to pack and catch an hour and a half of sleep.

- at 5am, Matt would pick Robert and I up at the hotel. Then we'd drive to the Newark Aiport to pick up Tim, who'd been hopefully catching some sleep on some seats.

- once we picked Tim up, the four of us drove to LaGuardia in the second rental car to drop it off and catch our flight out.

The plan worked pretty well, with the only hickup being we almost didn't allow enough time to drive through Manhattan. :(

We caught our flight from LGA to ORD (NY to Chicago) and Matt had actually upgraded us all to window seats so we could catch some sleep. The beautiful thing about my flight from NY to Chicago was that I had a 3 seat row ALL TO MYSELF! It was beautiful.

We landed in Chicago, looked to the big board for our flights, and luckily, mine out was in the same concourse! I unfortunately was confused by the time-zone difference for a moment and thought my plane was already boarding. So I rushed down to the opposite end of the concourse and saw that they weren't boarding for another hour. So the flight left at LOCAL time... not what-ever-time-Scott's-watch-is-set-to.

The flight from ORD to CMH (Chicago to Columbus) was another where I had the row all to myself. Which meant I had rows all to myself the whole round trip. (my two flights into Newark were smaller planes with one side only having one seat in the row)

Next... conclusions...

The New Jersey Chronicles - part II

Getting there...

I've traveled a decent amount, I'd say, mostly by car, but occasionally by airplane. CSG was flying me out of Port Columbus International Airport with a final destination of Newark, NJ, where I was to meet up with another guy (Tanny), get a car, and head to Rockaway, NJ.

Airport:CMH [Port Columbus International]
First of all I woke up at 3am in order to make it to the airport by 4:30am for my 6am flight out of Columbus. Everything went smoothly, even though TSA searched my backpack since I was carrying on tools (all of which were smaller than the 7" length limit as stated on the TSA website), they were concerned about my wrench, pulled it out, and decided I wasn't a threat, returned it to the bag, and sent me on my tired little way.

The flight out of CMH was headed to Dulles (Washington D.C.). It was a short flight, very smooth.

Airport:IAD [Washington Dulles International]
We landed, and I look at the big board to find out what gate to catch my connecting flight to Newark. Next to my flight number and destination (in big yellow letters) it says, "CANCELLED".

Crap.

I go to the customer service kiosk, pick up the phone and work on getting a flight to Newark. The (nice) lady on the other end tells me that there's not another flight to Newark until the next day. I told her that wasn't going to work - I had to be there TODAY. Eventually (somehow) she found a flight for me leaving Dulles at 12:30pm. Originally I was supposed to be in Newark around 9-9:30am. With the new flight, I wouldn't be getting in until 2:00pm.

A flurry of phone calls were made. Three of the guys were flying into Laguardia, and Tanny and I were flying into Newark. Tanny was already at Newark, he was waiting there for when I landed so we could get the car and head to the church (30 minutes away). In the end, the solution was the guys landing in LaGuardia would swing by and get Tanny. I would grab the car when I landed and head to the church. Cool.

I grabbed my flight out of Dulles with no further incident.

Airport: EWR [Newark International]
Upon arrival in Newark, I grabbed my checked suitcase (which miraculously made it to Newark), and headed for the tram that would take me to the rental car place. When I arrived at the rental counter, something had gone wrong with the whole switching the reservation into my name deal, and in the end, I ended up putting the car on a credit card.

The neat thing about the place where we got the car from is when I showed the attendant my reservation, he pointed at an aisle and said, "Choose a car from this aisle."

I drove a 2009 Chevy HHR around NJ for four days. Pretty sweet.

Next... The Return Trip and conclusions.

The New Jersey Chronicles

business, no pleasure

Went to New Jersey with Church Solutions Group to work on an install for Christ Church in Rockaway, NJ. Never heard of it? Don't worry, people i know from NJ hadn't heard of it, either.

My portion of the gig was to work on the lighting system for the church. There were some ups and downs about this system.

The ups - I learned the basics of working with a new lighting console, the ETC ION. The really neat thing about it is it has touch-screen functionality. I love learning new gear and figuring out how things work, so this was really the fun part for me.

The downs - the church was going for a "broadcast" feel for their lights. They planned on broadcasting their service to a satellite location. To them, this meant all the lights needed to be white light. BORING. In addition to that, the ceilings were low which created kind of a "deer-in-the-headlights" lighting angle to the people onstage. The Senior Pastor complained about this, and so MUCH though and work went into figuring out how to keep that from happening while still getting plenty of light on the stage.

It was pretty fun. Mostly because two of the other guys who were working on the install were people from my church in Lexington who I hadn't worked with in about a year. It kind of felt like a bit of a reunion.

So that's just what was going on when I got there. I had a whole mess of problems GETTING to NJ in the first place... more on that later.

Fun, Friends, and Food

...and landing jobs!

The past week has been a whirlwind of friends, news, and activities.

I left Ohio on Monday to head out west to visit Kirsten during her spring break. We had a blast! We went rock climbing at Upper Limits, hosted a beer and burger party at which I made my amazing burgers on the Forman grill, visited City Museum, and saw “The Watchmen” at a really cool movie theatre that had nothing but comfy leather couches for seating.

On Thursday, my patience paid off, and the production manager at Stages called to talk about the 2009 season. After a phone call, and a couple of emails, I’m heading back to St. Louis for work starting April 27th.

Heading back east, I stopped in Richmond for a visit with Dustin, Katie, and Xander for a night before heading to Lexington for a couple night visit with Logan and his fiancee Kristin, which is highly confusing me when I’m talking about her and my lady friend in the same sentence.

My last day in Lexington, I went to Sunday service at St. Awesome’s. I got to visit with a few friends from church and a few of us went out for an amazing lunch at a mexican restaurant. What was even a bigger blessing that day, was that I was offered a gig for this week. So Monday through Wednesday, I’m going to be going to New Jersey with a company called Church Solutions Group. They consult with churches and install audio, video, and lighting for worship. It should prove to be a lot of fun and hard work, a mix I tend to enjoy!

True Tales of Txt-ing

OMG. I'm an idiot.

The following conversation is not made up.

Dustin: You don't happen to need some contacts, do you? ;)

Scott: Not really. Just ordered some last week. Why?

Dustin: Well.... I have some here that I'm pretty sure are your prescription, a whole box as a matter of fact. :)

Scott: [thinking Dustin found an old box that I might have left there.] Haha! Throw them away. They're probably an old prescription.

Dustin: But they just came in the mail.

Scott: [A realization] What!? Oh crap!

Quickly pulling up the shipment confirmation email from 1-800 contacts, I discovered that I had changed my billing address... but not my SHIPPING address.

...yup.