Post travel notes

I made it home just fine. In fact, I was upgraded to 1st class across the ocean because they had overbooked business. It was LOVELY! But it is also a sign that I've flown too much this year!

For some reason, I ended up having an unusual number of conversations with very nice people on the way home.

• One of the flight attendants on the Gatwick to Dallas leg (they had 2 dedicated flight attendants for the 18 of us in 1st!) and I got into a 20 minute discussion about managing our crazy lives. She does a yoga class, BTW, that is 2.5 hours! 3 times a week!
  
• In the Dallas airport, I met an elderly couple that told me all about taking their granddaughters to London last year. And - just for the record - they are ONLY taking the granddaughters next time and NOT their daughter who messed up their plans on the last trip.
• My favorite story was probably from the person that I talked to the least. He was my seat mate from Dallas to Phoenix. He had flown out to Milwaukee and was flying back home to Phoenix a little over 24 hours later. With all the storms and delays, there was a really good chance that he could've been sleeping in an airport, but he did it anyway. Why? So that he could spend the day with 14 kids that he had never met before. Bill Hall plays for the Milwaukee Brewers. He wanted to give those kids one of the best days of their lives. He is my current hero.

I have more to post about - and I might even get to it later today - but I wanted to talk about this before the oddness of it all faded. Because it is unusual for me - yes, even me who talks to people all of the time - to have this many conversations on the long flights home after a business trip. Usually, I am just not interested in talking to anyone after all of the meetings and discussions. I'm sure that the difference was in me - since these people are probably around me on every trip - but it made the travel time much more interesting. So, note to self, be more open to talking to people on the plane and in the airport. You never know who you might meet!