By the Skin of My Feet

When it comes to demolishing feet, running 20 miles a week has nothing on a week in New York breaking in a new pair of heels. Even better is running through an airport in said heels. The skin on your feet isn't completely necessary, is it?

This is the second year that I have traveled to our New York office in the winter to work on a project. It may sound glamorous, but really it's all about databases, spreadsheets, and being quarantined in a conference room until your brains turn to mush. Even as I climbed into bed at the end of the day to rest my mind and my battered toes, I would dream about this database. Inevitably, it stars doing strange and confusing things like dreams do and I wake up, flop around and start the database dream all over again.

The view from my room on the 37th floor of the UN Millennium Plaza
overlooking the east river and Long Island City. No complaints here!

I was scheduled to leave straight from work at the end of the day to catch the last flight to Houston. Lesson #1: Don't try to hail a cab to take you to the airport at rush hour unless you want to hear, "I don't want to go there."

Another colleague and I managed to snag a cab and off we went! Did I mention that we went at about the pace I run? Literally. It took an hour and a half to drive just over 8.5 miles and we had given ourselves two hours to get to the airport and onto our planes. We take an exit and I get excited, then I realize we're on another freeway, and I swear this must have happened 5 times. I resigned to the fact that I would be in New York for another day when I was still on the freeway as it approached my flight's boarding time. I was trying to decide if I would just go to the check-in desk to figure out alternative plans or if I should still go through security check when we turned off on the final exit.

Office to Airport - just over 8.5 miles. Google says this is a 16 minute trip.

After rush hour traffic and passing a few wrecks, we finally reached the airport at 6:30. My flight time was 6:50, so I hit the ground running. If I was going to miss this flight, it wouldn't be for lack of trying. Little did I know that I was going to get one final training run in ...in an airport ...in heels. I stopped running only for the security check which was an extremely painful waiting period. I could see my gate as I waited to go through the metal detector and I could see that no one was there. Then, the most amazing words came from the other side, "Is anyone here going to Houston?" ME! I'm going to Houston!!! I threw my shoes back on, jammed the liquids back in my purse and took off running again, this time so enthusiastically that a gate agent had to flag me down so I didn't pass up the gate entirely. (In my defense, the A2 sign came a ways after the A2 gate.)

I made it by the skin of my teeth feet. There was no room for my bag in the overhead bins so it was gate checked, I was starving, had to pee (headed to a window seat, of course) and missing substantial amounts of foot, but I was going home. You see these types of adventures in movies, and let me assure you, it is not nearly as glamorous in real life.