After close to a month on the road, I’m feeling it. Everywhere. Most definitely in the gray matter department.
Last week in Florida I signed and personalized 28 books for a man who, on a limited income, can only afford to buy a single paperback book every two weeks. Of course I signed and personalized his books. Why wouldn’t I? As a percentage of his meager capital, it turns out he has invested a huge amount of his wealth in purchasing my books! I can only hope I can continue to deliver the goods for him for a very long time.
On Tuesday, after driving from Columbus, Ohio, to Pittsburgh, PA, an e-mail came in from one of my publicists in New York. Wanting to glance at the calendar before replying, I reached for my computer in what is known on tour as “the brown and white bag.” The problem is, the computer wasn’t there. The computer with more than 10,000 names in my database and 50% of the next Ali Book wasn’t there. As for the backup disk–where was that? Tucked inside the missing computer, of course. Remember what I just said about gray matter?
After an initial panic attack, we checked the rental car–not there. We had the bellman check in the luggage room in Pittsburgh–not there, either. And then I realized, I had carefully packed up all the cords to the computer back in Columbus, but I had failed to pack the computer itself. So I called the hotel in Columbus at 3:35 PM. When I was sent to the phone extension for the manager in charge of “Lost and Found,” her voice mail told me that she left work at 3:30 each day, but if I would please leave a description of my missing item, she would see that it was shipped to me at some time in the future. In my current state of mind, that was not a good answer.
Then, while I was still hyper-ventilating, I realized that Kathy and I were due to fly from Pittsburgh to St. Louis on Wednesday by private jet. So I called NetJets, and asked our jet card management team if they could change our itinerary to divert our flight to Columbus long enough to retrieve the AWOL computer. They said yes. Then I got back on the phone and raised enough of a fuss in Columbus that a manager who was still on duty was able to get into lost and found and verify that the computer was indeed there. Next, I arranged with NetJets to send a driver to pick up the computer and deliver it to the FBO (Fixed Base Operator) at the airport in Columbus.
Feeling relieved, I went to meet Kathy, my wing-man/daughter-in-law/traveling companion/aide de camp. It turns out, she was having telecommunications difficulties of her own. Her phone would not ring no matter what. She could text. She could call out, but people trying to call her couldn’t reach her. On our way to the event in Oakmont, we stopped in the parking lot long enough to reboot her phone after which I tried calling her. The phone in her hand didn’t ring, but her husband, my son Tom, answered a ringing telephone back home in Seattle. With Tom’s help, she learned her cell phone had been on call forwarding for an unspecified length of time. So she changed the setting, we both uttered a heartfelt, “Whew,” and went inside to do the event.
When we returned to our hotel afterwards,there was an e-mail waiting for me from NetJets saying there were “weather concerns” in both Columbus and St. Louis for our Wednesday flight. We made arrangements to move our departure time ahead for as much as we could in an attempt to beat the bad weather. The problem was, we couldn’t adjust the time very much because I was supposed to have an 8:45 to 9:00 AM telephone interview, with the interviewer scheduled to call me on my hotel phone in Pittsburgh.
That’s how things stood when Kathy and I went back to our respective rooms, across the hall from one another, on the 14th floor of the Pittsburgh Fairmont. Before going to bed, I called down to request a 7:30 breakfast delivery and a 7:15 wakeup call. After that I fell into bed and into a sound sleep. I was having a nightmare about doing a book signing in a pink negligee when I was rudely awakened by a horrendous pounding on the door to my room. I staggered out of bed, opened the door, and discovered a crowd of people gathered in the hallway. Kathy was there in her bathrobe with the hotel manager, room service waiter (still carrying the tray), and a bellman, armed with a slim jim, who was tying to open the night latch on my door. Kathy had heard the ruckus out in the hallway. After deciding not remain in her room and merely watch the show through her peephole, she came out, explained that I was deaf as a post, and pounded on the door loud enough to wake me. Had Bella been along, she would surely have warned me that someone was at the door long before that. Alas, she’s home in Tucson on this tour.
It turns out that when I didn’t respond to my 7:15 wakeup call or to the gentle tapping of the waiter delivering my food, the personnel at the Fairmont had collectively decided I was a goner and came to retrieve the cooling corpse.
Believe me, I was awake by then. As far as I knew, everything was under control. Kathy had readjusted our next car rental to our new St. Louis arrival time. The only thing I had to do for the next hour or so was sit quietly, drinking coffee, and prepare for the upcoming interview. As I did so, I amused myself by sitting by the window and contemplating how the empty rooftop parking lot several blocks away filled up over the next twenty or so minutes. It was fun to see them try on one parking place for size and then, for no discernible reason, choose to park in another.
Everything seemed to be A-OK at least until another NetJet call. The operations team told me there were now concerns about high winds in Columbus and that both our aircraft and the errant computer were being diverted elsewhere. That was the end of my quiet contemplation and I waited for my phone interview with a whole new set of worries and concerns. Finally it was time for the interview, but the call didn’t come through. Not for one minute, not for five. I waited. I tried calling my publicist. She was riding the subway in New York. Her cell phone doesn’t work underground. For the second time that morning, there came another loud knock on the door to my room. Outside I found a desk clerk from downstairs asking why hadn’t I answered my phone. “Because it hasn’t been ringing,” I told her.
She checked the phone, and she couldn’t make it work, either. She gave me the studio number of the interviewer, but nobody answered when I tried calling that. (Eventually that interview was moved to the following day.)
Minutes later, Kathy and I headed for the Pittsburgh airport in a driving downpour. After boarding, the pilot and co-pilot had a L-O-N-G discussion. Finally, we after we took off, the co-pilot came back to explain that we probably wouldn’t be able to stop in Columbus after all because of a continuing “wind” problem.
Fair enough. I understood then that my computer would probably be shipped to me via FedEx. I tried not to remember the numerous times I’ve opened torn and broken shipping packages from both FedEx and UPS–packages still scarred with visible tire tracks. But I’m also a realist. Getting the computer back right then wasn’t worth risking our lives, so I nodded my agreement. A few minutes later, he came back to us and announced that the winds in Columbus had let up enough that we were going there after all.
And so, here I sit, in a quiet hotel room in St. Louis, typing this blog on my faithful, no-longer-missing computer. I’m exceedingly grateful to be doing so. I’m not just grateful to the NetJets folks, either, who pulled out all the stops to make it happen. I’m also grateful to my many readers who made my being a NetJets customer possible. The idea of being able to hop a private jet for a leg or two of a national book tour was totally beyond anything I ever imagined when I drove my ’78 Cutlass Supreme to Seattle all those years ago with my kids in the back seat and with a U-Haul trailer holding all our worldly possessions.
I bought the used Cutlass in 1979 when it was a year old. My first husband, who was also my soon-to-be-former husband by then, told me I should never have bought the car and that I would never be able to pay for it. Given that, I can only imagine what he’d think about my having a jet card that is also bought and paid for.
That man has been gone since long before my first book was published. He never would have seen this day coming, never in a million years. Sometimes living well really is the best revenge.
As for that gray matter difficulty? I have no doubt that a few days spent at home, sleeping in my own bed, and sitting on the patio with my hubby and my dog, will put me right as rain. I’ll be back at my keyboard writing again in no time.