My Macworld Odyssey (Part 2)

Last time I spoke about the end of Macworld 2009 and Apple’s seemingly determined bid to end the trade show as we know it. No trade show dealing with Apple products had lasted more than a year after they leave it, so we kinda half-believed that this might be the very last Macworld. Since this was an event that I just couldn’t miss, I was NOT going to be on the sidelines. My biggest problem wasn’t lack of sponsors or having to pay for my own travel, it was thwarting Mother Nature who for reasons unknown seemd really angry at the US East Coast. On to my journey.

While it may seem like going from the East Coast to the West was a mission from hell, other people traveled MUCH further than I did. David Cohen, for example, who is smarter than I am had arrived the Saturday before the show to try and get acclimated. Remember he’s coming from the UK which is about a billion hours behind California time. This means he ends up in San Francisco BEFORE he’s actually born. I wish I could explain it better, but it involves a Delorean, lots of math with quadratic equations that I haven’t done since high school, and flashy lights that go “BING!” so don’t ask. My path to Macworld was fraught with danger, secret codes, and women in slinky dresses who will kill me if I don’t give them the information they want. True story except for the part about danger, secret codes, and women.

My original plans called for me to leave on the Tuesday before the event. Being an East Coaster, I only had a three hour time difference so getting used to a new schedule wasn’t going to be as difficult. Since I would be flying on a Tuesday, it meant I would only be at work for one day, so I decided to leave on Saturday as well, visit some friends in Ohio for the weekend and then fly out of Akron. Little did I know at the time that because of THIS decision, I was actually going to go to the Expo instead of sitting behind in the new arctic landscape known formally as Virginia.

On Wednesday, the 3rd of February we started getting word of another big snowstorm that was going to hit not only northern Virginia, but the entire east coast. I started getting nervous and told my wife I was thinking about moving my travel plans from leaving on the morning of Saturday the 6th to after work on Friday. By Thursday morning it seemed pretty clear that this storm was going to be a whopper. This was on top of the two previous nearly back to back storms that had dumped a lot of snow that had yet to be cleared. My wife started sending me National Weather Service bulletins that morning that kept pushing up the timeline for when the snow was going to start. It started saying Saturday morning but by lunchtime it was Friday morning at 9AM. That was enough to send me home in full panic mode to pack all my clothes I could think of that I needed (which really cost me later) and all the tech gear I might use. I was out the door and on the road by 3:30PM.

Made it to Ohio without incident and stopped for the night at a hotel not far from the border since I didn’t want to just show up at my friend Dave and his wife Joyce’s house after 11:00PM. I woke up the next day to a near-blizzard. Fortunately, their home was only about 1 and ½ hours away so no problems there. I spent a good part of the weekend helping Dave clear some areas of snow and watched a very enjoyable Super Bowl. Tracey and my kids were snowed in at this point. All the area airports were closed or on huge delays and the roads were (and still are in some areas) a mess and nearly impassible. If I had waited or booked my flights out of DC-area airports, I would not have been able to go to Macworld. This naturally was of little concern to Tracey who spent much of her time off from work shoveling snow or berating the kids to help. I owe her big and do not want to gloss over the sacrifices she made so I could gallivant off to California.

On Tuesday the 9th I left Dave’s house for the Airport. Now when I booked these flights, I entered the address of the Airport I THOUGHT I was leaving from (insert ominous music here) into my NavigonAG GPS App (unabashed plug) on my iPhone. Once I arrived at the airport, the most significant structure I could see was the huge GoodYear hanger that the dirigibles the Akron and the Macon had been built in during the 1930’s.

Brief educational interlude.

Since most of you don’t know what a dirigible is, I’ll take a moment and tell you. They are kinda shaped like those blimps you see outside of major sporting events but have a rigid structure and are roughly 3-4 times bigger in length. The Akron and Macon were filled with helium (much like the blimps of today) and were actually built for and used by the US Navy. Both were destroyed in storms that tossed these behemoths up and down like a roller coaster. The crew in a panic would dump helium when the ships were tossed up and ballast when they were tossed down. Eventually you run out of one or the other and down you go. After this, the US Navy (and GoodYear) were much more content to make the cylinder-like gas bags that we call blimps. For the record, this scenario played out much the same for every other country that experimented with dirigibles.

The Hindenburg is probably the most famous primarily for its spectacular destruction in 1937. Instead of being filled with Helium (much more expensive and not allowed for sale by the US to Nazi Germany), it was filled with Hydrogen one of the most explosive gases known. So the Zeppelin Company built an over 900 foot long structure with large gas bags filled with hydrogen, surrounded by internal combustion engines (cranking out hundreds of mini explosions every second) turning the propellers, and on the bottom they put passenger cabins filled with people who could afford such luxury travel (including a smoking room) because what’s the worst that could happen? OH the humanity and so one.

Back to my trip.

I was at the wrong airport. I put into Google the question of where the Akron airport was and it sent me (further proof of Google’s evil intentions toward Apple…even though I don’t work for Apple) to the Akron-Fulton (so-called) international airport which is in reality a private airfield instead of the Akron-Canton airport where mere mortals such as myself cram into pressurized tubes for transport. Not to worry though I did lots of it then, I got to the correct airport just in time to learn that the snowstorm for THAT day had delayed flights into and out of Chicago’s lovely O’Hare airport. We did finally leave though we arrived too late into Chicago to catch my connecting flight. A mere three hours later I caught a flight to San Francisco where I met up with Tim.