I learnt an important lesson four days ago and it’s actually something that was predicted somewhat by a person I randomly met at Los Angeles Airport a week ago. For she was a teacher of the Demartini Method and what she said to me during that unexpected, yet somehow it felt so right, contact was that I was on a high and I should look for a balance before the balance found me.

On Friday the balance found me, and I was brought back to reality. I was on a high you see. I’d had a great few weeks of meeting great people, I was given a farewell bash of epic proportions in Melbourne by my fantastic former team at HP (and my legendary ex-manager Eddie), I caught up with a couple of long time friends, and the last week I was living it up in Atlanta. "Work hard, play hard" was my motto. It certainly helped that I finally met my gorgeous colleague from Costa Rica - Gaby - and we got along like a house on fire.

So back to Friday…

At 2.30pm my new manager Ron, another colleague and I raced to Atlanta Airport. Ron’s experience suggested that we had to get in early to beat the horrendous Atlanta Friday traffic and he wasn’t wrong. Traffic wasn’t absolutely shocking, such as Hosur Road’s afternoon nightmare in Bangalore, however there was potential there to delay. Add to that the long ass security clearance lines at the airport and it definitely made sense to get to the airport asap.

So after arriving at the airport a shuttle bus took us from the Avis vehicle return area to the two airport departure terminals. Just my luck my terminal was the last one and catching my flight was more critical (Ron joked about it too).

Once inside the terminal I needed to pick up my ticket from ticketing. Seeing as the first leg on my outbound trip was from Atlanta to Miami I figured I’d try and give the American Airlines domestic self check-in a shot. I hadn’t had
much luck with self check-in on my inbound trip but I also didn’t want to join the longer check-in queue.

My attempt to bypass the longer queue failed when the machine did not recognise my e-ticket number and I was eventually advised by a customer service person to join the international queue. Bugger!

Eventually (almost forty mins later) I did manage to check in. I then joined the long security queue (as Ron had predicted on the drive to the airport).

A word about US airport security - it’s a heck of a lot more serious than security in Australia. I guess that’s expected following 9/11 however it was still an experience to have to take my shoes off and dispose of my water bottle.

Next: Part two.