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Global
Kick Off "Paris Disneyland, No Free time, No Families, No Paris, 14 hours on a plane. Do you want to come?" |
Saturday 25th Nov 2006 |
Novell® Global Field Kick Off FY07: November 10-14, Disneyland ParisDear Colleagues, It is my pleasure to invite you to join the Novell team for our 2007 Global Field Kick Off. This year's conference, themed “Ready to Win!” will be held November 10-14 in Paris, France at the Disneyland Paris properties. We got this note from our new Chairman Ron Hovsepian. This is surprising news. I have been with Novell for almost 15 years and we have done quite a few "Global" kick off's or "World Wide" Sales meetings but they have always been in the United States. For the very first time we are going to do a "Global" event outside of the U.S. It would be as if the World Series included baseball teams from someplace else. I have not written a real "Travel Log" in awhile. Most of my stuff lately has been humorous stories, since while I travel nothing really new or interesting ever occurs. I am nervous about this one since I have a tendency to offend people in my travel logs. That's because I try, and often fail, to make them funny. This means I lie. A good example is the last story I wrote, about going to the Heart Concert at Billy Bob's. I wrote that Mike, a friend of mine, gave me a look that could only be translated into "Are you really this much of a moron?" He never gave me that look. I write stuff like that to put in a little comic relief and because I am kind of a moron so people that know me can relate.Paris Disneyland! Paris is a really good thing. I love Paris. My wife loves Paris. The people there are really nice and they appreciate that you flew over from the United States so they treat you wonderfully. They don't care that you come in to their restaurants without being able to speak a single word of French or even if you ask them to bring you ketchup for your eggs. Disneyland is a really good thing, well organized, where dreams come true. They try and make your visit as enjoyable as possible, build a memory for you and your kids. Disney has built their business around being "the Happiest Place on Earth" Two great places. It is like combining peanut butter and chocolate, one plus one equals three, except in this case one plus one equals one half. It is like Sushi and Ice Cream. I love Sushi. I love Ice Cream, but I'm really not that fond of Sushi flavored Ice Cream. Paris is the City of Lights, it has the Arc de Triomphe, Tour Eiffel, la Seine, the Left Bank and the Louvre. Disneyland has Planet Hollywood, The Steakhouse, the Rainforest Cafe, McDonald's and Billy Bob's. If this sound more like Fort Worth, Texas then Paris France. You can understand my disappointment. I really don't want to fly for 14 hours changing planes in Chicago, so I can land in the City of Lights only to ride a bus over to Fort Worth, Texas the place I come from. I also should point out that we were missing a key component to have a good time at Disneyland. Kids. There were kids there, just not our kids. I did feel sorry for the kids that were there. You come to Disneyland and you're surrounded by two thousand adults in suits. I had to remind some of our people that the really short people walking around the hotel were kids. One of my friends was standing in the hallway outside the hotel bar swearing like he was a drunken sailor on leave in the Philippines. I won't mention his name, but Rob you know who you are. Still it was fun to be traveling with these guys. I'm not really complaining. I think it is cool that we are going to have our "Global" meeting somewhere on the Globe where the address doesn't end with USA. It also means that everyone will have to have a passport so maybe people will travel now. I have always complained that people who have "Global" or "World-Wide" in their title should at least have a passport. It is hard to believe that the Worldwide Marketing Manager doesn't have a passport. I am disappointed that some of my friends will think that Disneyland Paris is international. I was also embarrassed that many of my European friends thought that we pick Disneyland Paris so us poor American's wouldn't get culture shock. Let me assure them we didn't. We picked it because it was cheap. It has enough hotel space to hold us all and Paris in November is really off season. It is wet, cold and overcast. I told my wife we were going to Paris and she said what all wives say, "I want to come." I reminded her that, we have been to Paris a number of times already, that I will have a total of 4 hours free across the entire week and most importantly it's Paris in November. She thought about it and decided that this would be a good trip to pass on. I con my boss into giving me a ride to the airport. His wife drops us off so we won't have to pay the $150 it will cost to leave a car parked at the terminal. We show up at the airport and see a group of Novell people already there. We are dressed casually since we are leaving around 2:00 pm and will be getting into Paris at 8:00 am. Some of us are dressed more casually than others. Chad looks like he is going to Nam or the Amazon Jungle. He is wearing; Vietnam era jungle boots, T-shirt, hunting shirt like a jacket and most humorously a camouflage hat. This tickles me because I see him walking down the Left Bank of the Seine dressed like he is walking to his deer stand in Dimmit county, Texas. Our plane is on time which I'm pretty happy about because we have less than 50 minutes for our layover in Chicago so a single lighting strike in Dallas will make us miss our flight. I fly American all the time and on almost every flight I have power at my seat. I promised I would fix my bosses computer, which I messed up the night before but his battery is dead so I need power. A flight to Austin which last 35 minutes has power. The 2 hour and 25 minute flight to Chicago - no power. This surprises me but not as much as that the 9 hour flight to Paris doesn't have power. I am writing this travel log over the Thanksgiving holiday because while I was on a plane for over 25 hours I was never near a power outlet. A fifty minute lay over in Chicago coming in from Dallas is just begging for a problem. Changing planes in Chicago is always a pain but in November and going international I was sure I was going to end up in the Chicago Marriott instead of the Disney Sequoia Lodge. This wasn't a problem for me because I would have been happy to show up a little late for the meeting in Paris Disneyland. I was looking forward to missing my plane so of course our flight took off exactly on time. We landed 10 minutes early. Our gate was unoccupied. Most suprisingly our flight to Paris left from a gate just a couple of gates down from our arrival gate. We were joined on the flight to Paris by a number of other Novell people. One of my friends had his whole family with him, he was going to stay few extra days so rented an apartment in Paris. I was sitting next to Colby, my new boss, when Chris and Wife walked by on my side. Chris saw me, started to say "Hello" and then saw Colby. He leaned over me, shook Colby's hand and yelled out, "Honey look it's Colby." His wife smiled and his kids squealed in delight as they all said "Hi" to Colby. He had to move on without introducing me to his family but his wife sent him up later to tell , that "other guy" who was sitting next to Colby that he was sorry for not introducing me. He came up to us just in time to be surrounded by carts. The flight attendant from first class blocked him in and then before he could retreat the other flight attendant came up behind him with a cart. When he excused himself and asked if he could sneak by her she responded by saying, "Sure, I really love to move my cart." She moved it the six inches needed for him to get back to his seat but also marked where he was sitting so she could give him the special meal flight attendants save for trouble makers, We will be flying all night arriving at 8:00 am Paris time so it would be good to get a little sleep. The problem is that the airline is showing two movies on this flight on a very large screen that is about four feet away from my face. Every time the scene changes from an indoor shot to an exterior shot the dramatic change in lighting wakes me up. I get about 8 minutes of sleep. We get off the flight in Paris, come through immigrations, grab our bags, and start to walk out of customs. We are walking on to French soil like we are stepping out on to our front lawn until Kuppusami one of our top Consultants from St. Louis gets to the door. The custom and immigration guys who have been leaning on their backsides perk up and call him out of line. He thinks they are limo drivers looking to give us a ride into Paris so ignores them. This is not a good thing to do. He is right in front of me in line and I see the assault rifles come off the slings and think, " I wonder how good a shot these guys are." He finally realizes that while we don't profile, if your name is Kuppusami Natesan, even if you are from St. Louis Missouri, you are going to get stopped coming into France. I quickly step around him and wonder, "Do they strip search you in France?" We take a slow bus to the hotel, drop some of the guys off at the Newport Bay, the Hotel New York and then stop at my hotel the Sequoia Lodge. The clerk behind the counter dressed in a California Park Rangers outfit tells me that I will not be able to check in for another seven hours. I have had eight minutes of sleep in the last 24 hours, I haven't showered and I'm wearing the same clothes that I flew across the Atlantic in so I'd like to freshen up but that will have to wait. We had dinner in Chicago, another dinner on the plane and a warm Croissant just a couple of hours ago so I don't feel like getting something to eat, especially at a McDonald's.   I call up Bill Sears and we decide to take the train into Paris. I have been to Paris before but I've never taken the train. Bill tells me that Chip who lived here told him it was really easy. You just get on the RES and it will take you right into Paris. We get to the terminal and try and figure out how to pay to get on the RES It is not RES, it is RER (Réseau Express Régional) and it is not just the train to Paris and back from Disneyland. It is the name of the Paris commuter rail network. It services everything including Charles de Gaulle, Versailles, and Disneyland. One of the lines does end at Disneyland so at least going to Paris we can not go the wrong way. We buy a full day pass that will allow us to get on the RER, the Metro, and any bus in Paris. Bill has the sense to get a map so we can decide what stop we need to get off at for our walking tour. Our walking tour turns out to be more like the Bataan Death March. We decide to get off at the Auber station because it is near the Louvre. We stop at a small café and grab some lunch. We know no French at all and I was surprised when we couldn't even get the idea of a Coca-Cola across to our very patient waiter. I said Coca-Cola about six times in my best French accent but it wasn't until Bill said it and added the word "light" that we got a couple of bottles. We ordered by pointing at the menu and Bill made the guy laugh by asking for ketchup for his fries. We left the restaurant heading towards the Louvre. The idea is to walk along the Seine and down the Champs-Elysées to the Arc de Triomphe with a quick dogleg over to see the Eiffel Tower. We don't go into anything, since we only have about five hours left before we need to be back for the reception. We  cut
though the Louve so Bill can see the large glass pyramid that acts as
the entrance. He takes a couple of shots and then we head
over
to
the Seine. We cross over to the left bank checking out Notre
Dame
Cathedral from the bridge. We walk along the river and he
keeps checking his watch. He wants to call home but it isn't
quite 6:30 am yet back in St Louis so it's still a bit early.
At exactly 1:30 pm Paris time Bill calls to "rub it in" that he is
walking along the Seine on the way to the the Eiffel Tower.
He is calling his
daughter Steph who has always wanted to come to Paris. A
very
sleepy Mrs Sears answers the phone because today is a Teacher Working
day so no school for Steph which means that the whole
family was going to sleep in, until
Bill decided to call. The cost of the presents that he was
planning on bringing home from Paris just went up dramatically. No rest for the wicked so we continue on to the Eiffel Tower. We are walking along the river when Bill notices that a bird has crapped on my white shirt. I have not slept, showered, or changed clothes for the last 32 hours, my feet hurt, my back is killing me and to top it all off an unseen French pigeon, or judging from the size of its dropping a large French condor, has deposited the remains of its lunch on the shoulder of my once white shirt. I decide right then and there, that I will have to write a travel log. The line to ride to the top of the Eiffel tower is at least an hour long so we skip it. I do use the bathroom to vainly try and remove some of the bird droppings from my shirt but it doesn't work. I step off the curb and when my unbent leg hits the cobblestone streets of Paris a pain that can only be  described as excruciating
races up my back. The spasm makes me think maybe we
should call it
a day. Bill is taking photos and I think the best place to see Paris is the Arc du Triumph. It is high enough to see the whole city but not too high. The Eiffel tower is really too high, everything is too far away. But the Arc is just high enough. Of course to get to the top you have to climb 280 steps and if your back is starting to go out on you, it might not be the best idea to save this for the last thing to do on your visit to Paris. We climb to the top. Bill takes some photos, then laughs at my pain as I plant another straight legged landing off one of the steps. We walk slowly down the 280 steps then head the wrong way to the train station adding an extra mile to the "road march" for the day. The train station is a bit confusing, partly because everything is in French, partly because I am in a lot of pain, and partly because I am a dumb to the bone grunt. We need to get on the "Red line." I am sure the train is marked some how but it is a mystery to me how. You would think it would be color coded. We jump on the first train that we see, it is rush hour so it is packed solid. I am not sure if we're on the right train or if we are if it is going in the proper direction. I look up at the map and tell Bill if it is going in the right direction the next station will be Etoile and if we are going the wrong way it will be Nanterre Préfecture. I am very pleased with myself when the next station is Etoile but Bill is unconvinced. He also notices that the red line splits. One will take us to Marne-la-Vallée where we what to go and the other line goes to Boissy-Saint-Léger. The lines are marked as A4 and A2 on the route map but we can not find A4 or A2 anywhere on the train. You would think that since we know were we want to go and the line we want to go on, that it would be easy to get on the right train. Four trains later we are finally headed back to Disneyland. I check into my room, strip off my guano covered shirt, take a quick shower just in time to head over to the reception. I have been awake for thirty six hours so after a couple of beers I am ready to hit the sack. We start the next day at around 7:00 am on Saturday morning and the day goes through Dinner that night. We have been separated into random groups for dinner. The restaurants that we going to go to are the Hard Rock Cafe, Bill Bob's, and the Steakhouse. I lived in England so my expectation for a good steak in Europe is pretty low but this was definitely not "Black Angus" it was more like Wild Mustang. The food has been consistently bad on this trip. Other than the meal we had in Paris I have been unimpressed. Dinner seems to be our leftovers from lunch which will be rewarmed and served again for dinner the following night. Breakfast is luncheon meats and breads. I'd kill for a good omelet. Sunday is the same as Saturday except we have the awards dinner followed by drinks and this is the night to get stupid. As I get older I have reduced the number of nights that I can get stupid down to one per week. I drink the very good wine and skip the very bad food at the the awards dinner. We are amazingly done on-time which is a first. It is because the new President of North American gives away all of the awards. It is a great idea. If you invite each Vice President up to the podium they will talk forever. If you ask them to write up something for the President it will be short, sweet, and to the point. The good thing is the winners only want to hear their name and then move on to the drinking. We quickly move on to the drinking. We close down the Main Tent and after we get tossed out of there we move on to the Hurricane bar. I hook up with too many friends to mention and since it was my stupid night I am not sure if I remember everyone that I hooked up with anyways. We close the place down and I get back to the room just in time to get my wake up call from Goofy. I get one from him every morning but this morning is seems especially Goofy. I take a shower, take six aspirins; two for my headache, two for my backache and two to thin out my blood so it will be the same consistency as the alcohol that makes up the majority of the fluids in my system this fine Monday morning. Today is breakout sessions. Some of them will be good. Some of them will be not so good. All of them will be painful. My back is killing me and with as little sleep as I had before skipping going to bed last night I will not be a happy camper. One of my friends wanted me to skip the breakout sessions and go to Normandy. We heard about it from one of my partners who came over early and toured Utah and Omaha beaches. It sounded amazing but I can't do anything unless I can write about it so I had to pass. Sitting through some of those sessions made me deeply regret that decision. Monday night is our "Fun Event." I have been to Paris Disneyland three times - all work related, but I have never been to the Park or the Disney Studios. I am not sure why. I assume because it comes after my stupid night so I am too hung over or too tired to go. I am both too tired and too hung over this night and my back is really killing me. I have been eating aspirin like they are M&M'S all day. Luckily they are serving alcohol so I grab a little "hair of the dog" and head off. I can't stay too late tonight, because I can not do another stupid night and second reason is because a friend of mine from Paris is going to come by and have a drink with me.  I
have time to grab a couple drinks and a pizza shaped like Mickey Mouse
and go on a couple of rides. The ride that is closest to the
bar
is Rock'n’Roller
Coaster starring Aerosmith
I know, but you have to remember that you are not
hung over,
sleep deprived or the dumb to the bone Grunt, I am. I talked
Bill
into sitting in the back because the back of a roller coaster is moving
down the drops faster then the front. (It's a physics thing
you just
have to believe me unless you can do the math) Any way I am
in
the back just in front of Bill, I'm pulling the locking harness down
when Bill says, "How's your back?" I know I just tagged you
on
not knowing the math and now have proven that I'm too stupid
to not get on a roller coaster
with a bad back. After the first steep drop it feels like my
retinals have detached, that I might be having a carotid
compression
induced stroke, and my back has spasmed near
the
nerve roots of my spinal cord. I do the last three quarters
of the
ride not screaming like a teenager but crying like a little girl..
I have tears running down my face and I am praying for the
ride
to end or for the Archangel Gabriel to come and bring me into the
loving arms of a merciful God. I assume if the ride doesn't
end
soon both will occur. I stagger off of the ride just in time to get a call from Pierre-Eric Plaquet or since I have no gift for languages "PEP." He is at the hotel bar. The choice is another roller coaster ride or drinks with an old friend. It is pretty obvious that I am going to head over to the bar. I have my leather wallet clenched in my teeth to muffle my screams as by back spasms each time I take a step. I have a great visit with PEP. We talk about the good old days. I have to call it a early night for obvious reasons. Tomorrow is our last day. We have to start an hour early since the airport wants everyone to arrive three hours before their flights. Everyone is so tired. Even the guy that called the meeting shows up late for it. We sneak out early, split the cost of a cab and try to get to the airport in time to talk our way onto a direct flight to Dallas/Fort Worth. I would have given up after the first twenty minutes but my boss keeps trying until he is completely shutdown by the supervisor. We walk over to the ticketing gate and he trys again. He is so persistent that I assume it might work until I notice the supervisor has followed us down. She shuts him down again but just after I check my bag for the flight to Dallas through Chicago she breaks down and puts us on standby for the direct flight to Dallas. We just make it through security in time so they can put us on the direct flight. Life is good, instead of getting back to Dallas at 9:00 pm ( 4:00 am Paris Time) we will get in at 3:00 pm. We have bulkhead seats with no power which I am not that happy about but getting home 6 hours early and not having to change planes in Chicago is pretty sweet. I'm happy enough. They start serving dinner. We are about two hours out over the Atlantic when the Purser/Chief Flight Attendant looks over to the other flight attendants and says very clearly, "Everyone meet me in the galley. Now!" Colby gives me a look like, "This can not be good." I shrug and give him my "When your nickel is up you get off the ride" look. The pilot comes on and says, "Ladies and Gentlemen, Here at American, safety is our main concern." This is never followed by good news. The fight attendants are putting the carts away and when Colby ask her a question her response of, "I'm not going to have that discussion with you ." is not reassuring. The captain continues with his explanation, "We are getting an atypical fuel consumption indication up here in the cockpit. We don't want to fly over the Atlantic with this kind of indication so we will be turning back and landing at London's Heathrow airport." There is an audible groan from the passengers. This does not amuse the Purser, which always surprises me. Flight crews always seem to misunderstand that groan. They seem to think that we want the pilot to just go ahead and fly across the ice cold north Atlantic. That groan really means that we would rather not be on an airplane that might be streaming 50,000 lbs of burning jet fuel from one of its wings. She is giving us a dirty look and she seems so shaken that I'm starting to wonder what would cause an atypical fuel consumption indication in the cockpit of a 767-300 . The most obvious is that we have a fuel leak. I assume that the passengers near the windows would indicate if a fiery tongue of buring fuel was streaming down the left side of the aircraft so I push that to the back of my mind. The other is that the fuel pump is pouring too much fuel into the turbine. I am not sure what would occur if that was the case. I suppose that it could reduce engine efficiency or it could act like an afterburner and provide more power while consuming too much fuel for us to make Dallas. The problem that I am hoping for, is a bad gauge. The look on the flight attendants face doesn't lead me to believe that she thinks it is a bad gauge. We turn toward London. An hour and a half later we're well into our approach for Heathrow when the pilot comes on the intercom again, "For the seasoned fliers among us, you will notice that we will be landing a bit faster than normal." ( I expect him to say, because I'd like to get the hell out of this airplane as fast as possible.) He continues, "We are a bit heavier than normal because we have not used much of our fuel yet."This is one of those good news / bad news things in my mind. If we did have a fuel leak we wouldn't be heavy after flying for three hours, but since we are too heavy to make a normal landing I wonder why we don't dump fuel or fly around a bit more to burn off the extra fuel. I assume we don't fly around and burn off the excess fuel because the pilot would like to land this Fuel/Air Explosive device Boeing calls a 767-300 as soon as possible.. We do come in very fast. A 767-300 normally comes in at around 125 mph. We come in at 180 mph which is so fast the pilot had to use less flaps so he wouldn't damage the wings. We touch down. The pilot gets on the brakes and throws the engines into full reverse thrust. He doesn't come out of reverse thrust until we are 100 feet from the end of the runway. The flight attendants start the clapping, which I have to admit is more than a bit disconcerting. The pilot comes back on the intercom and assures us that all of the (he pauses as he thinks of a reassuring replacement word for "crash trucks" and says,) "airport vehicles," that we see approaching us are normal whenever a plane lands this quickly since the tires can (he pauses again thinking of a replacement word for "explode and burst into flames" he settles for) "get warm." They look us over and based on the nervousness of the crew I assume they will start foaming down the wings but it must have been a bad gage since we quickly move over to the terminal. I assume if we were leaking raw jet fuel onto the runway that they wouldn't let us taxi over to the terminal. I am kind of hoping that we will get stuck in London for the night. It has been awhile since I have been in London and it would be fun to catch a play or hit a restaurant. If you are going to get redirected to another airport I'd strongly recommend Heathrow. It is a great airport, they are efficient and the people are very nice. They swap out our equipment so we are going to be on a triple seven which is a much bigger plane and has in-seat entertainment but for some strange reason I still don't have power at my seat. We have a 5 hour delay which means that we will get into DFW around midnight, which isn't all that bad. I assumed I was going to end up in the middle seat of a flight going to Boston or JFK which would have landed me in the wrong city after one in the morning. Since no flights leave that late I would have had to spend an extra night in the Terminal like Tom Hanks. I get a ride home from the airport from Chris. I will be in my own bed with a good story. It is a lot better than Sushi flavored Ice Cream. |
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