The Difference of Two Hours

Apologies for my delinquent posting, there has been so little and so much going on that I haven't had the motivation to blog. Work suddenly crept up on me after the hiatus of the holidays and my trip back home. I expected the next few months to be quiet in terms of business travel but now my calendar seems packed until April. Also, all of a sudden there seems to be a steady stream of people coming from the US between work and personal visitors which means I've watched a lot of NFL over the last two weeks. I'm still sad over the Green Bay loss since Brett deserved another Super Bowl ring (because yes, he is that cute!). Seriously, he played a stunning game in the middle of a blizzard. But then again what do I know about American football and I digress.

Back to the original topic of this post. I've been spending quite a bit of time in the car these days between driving to meetings and just plain sitting in traffic. Two Mondays ago we had some torrential rain here in the UK (big surprise) which caused the entire marketing team to spend an average of 2 hours on the road trying to get into the office. The longest commute took 2 hours and 18 minutes to cover 38 miles. When we were all finally assembled in the office we had a long conversation about where we should move the office to. Since we all live in different directions, that proved to be a very unproductive conversation.

Spending all of that time in the car made me think about what a difference two hours can really make. This was particularly relevant since I'd just taken the Eurostar train to Paris the Saturday before. Now that they've move the Eurostar service to the St. Pancrass station, it only takes a bit over 2 hours to travel from London to Paris. As I've mentioned in previous posts, I LOVE France but this was a particularly special trip. A couple weeks ago some events passed that put me in a really miserable state (don't ask because I really don't feel like talking about it). On Thursday night a notice popped up on my computer screen from my friend Karen. She was asking if I had any plans for the weekend which was an odd question coming from her since she lives in New York (well really New Jersey). I'd just come back from my home visit so I had planned to spend the weekend recuperating. Well it turned out that Karen had access to some kind of world traveler airline pass and could fly anywhere in the world for free except for the taxes. First she suggested a visit to London but apparently the taxes were fairly high so before I knew it I was online looking for cheap Eurostar tickets to Paris.

Karen and I both arrived in Paris Saturday morning and basically spent 24 hours there. We made the most of our time though between the cafes, bookshops, and restaurants. We spent our day in and around the Latin Quarter, which is an area we both love with the Notre Dame and the River Seine just there. In general it was just good to see her again and she refused to let me be miserable. I can still see her telling as me we walked down a small alley, "This is the street of misery, once we get to the end you're not allowed to be miserable anymore." She is definitely one of the most positive and driven people that I know so it was good to be around her during that time.

The trip was extremely spontaneous and probably a bit irresponsible but I guess my point is that I'd rather spend two hours on a train to Paris than two hours sitting in traffic.

As always, pictures are on the right-hand navigation.