Michigan is Lovely this Time of Year

The first week of February, I traveled to Traverse City, Michigan for work. It definitely was not my idea! I got about 3 hours of sleep before I had to wake up at 3AM to get ready and catch my 6AM flight. Of course, once I got through security, I found out that my plane was delayed by two hours. Awesome. So I got some Mexican hot cocoa, walked around, and did some work while I waited. Once boarded, I got very comfortable and my 4 hour flight to Chicago went very quickly because I slept pretty much the whole way!

Once in Chicago, my coworker and I had to hustle to the gate to catch our connection, which meant there was no time to get food. Oh, I hate being hungry especially when I am on the company dime!We finally landed in Traverse City around 4:30PM. It was cold and snowy, but sunny. I was hungry and tried, but glad to be done flying. We got our rental car and headed to the hotel where we did some catch up work. Then around 6PM, we finally went and got food. We didn't know really where to go and places seemed closed so we ended up going to an Italian sandwich shop. I got two sandwiches just to make sure I would be full!

Tuesday, I got up after not sleeping very well because I was cold and the air was so dry I could not breath, but anyways, we got to the hospital and did some training. It went pretty well and it was kind of a slow day of work....finally! This is a view of the parking lot right outside the building we did the training.

SO MUCH SNOW!

After work, we met up with the project team for dinner, but I wasn't feeling very good so I just got a salad. Then after dinner, I was craving sugar and told my coworker I really needed dessert! This is where I should have known better since I wasn't feeling well already. I got frozen yogurt AND a cupcake. They were delightful going down!

So after dessert, my coworker and I drove around the town. It is a resort town right on the edge of a lake so it is quite beautiful and picturesque. The population is around 35,000, but during the summer it grows to 350,000 because it is where the city folk come to get away. Anyways, about half way through the drive, I started to feel a lot worse, but I didn't have the heart to tell my coworker. So I just prayed that I would have enough time to ask my coworker to pull over if needed or make it back to the hotel. Luckily, I held out until we were back at the hotel, but I ended up having terrible food poisoning that night. This has been my third business trip with food poisoning! Not cool.

Wednesday, I got up feeling weak so I just drank Sprite all morning. I could not risk being sick on my flights home! I had a few client meetings too and then I left for the airport at 2PM.

I flew to Detroit and then to Salt Lake. Unfortunately, in Salt Lake, they had terrible fog so we could not land for 40 minutes and then we were stuck on the runway for 30 minutes because the plane couldn't see the gates. At this point, I had only had Sprite and was so hungry. I just wanted to be home and so I almost cried when I saw that my plane to Portland was delayed for two hours. I pulled myself together enough to get some Cafe Rio and a Krispy Kreme Doughnut. Luckily, my stomach was working again so my fear of throwing up on the plane didn't happen. I finally got home at 1:30AM!