Commuting to work

So I left off with getting to the hotel. I met up with the sales guys later in the evening at the local pub for a couple beers. It was good to meet them in a relaxed atmosphere before getting to work the next morning. The next morning we got to work pretty early, which allowed for some time to have some classic English breakfast, which meant bacon sandwiches. Bacon here is like sliced ham (like you get with ham and eggs) but aged and flavored like American style bacon. Amazing! The work day was good and the weather was beautiful. We had grilled meats all day to keep the energy up, which was good to help avoid the jetlag. Work like this is typical trade show stuff, so nothing exciting. Dinner later was excellent though. We all went to a local restaurant in Thornbury and had this amazing Tapas style dinner. We're in cider country, so of course we had plenty of cider. This type of cider is for kids either... And by the way, there's a castle in Thornbury. Henry VIII used to go there with Anne Boleyn back in the day. The amount of history around here is amazing. I didn't get to see the castle, but apparently it's impressive. Anyway, it was a good day. More to come later.

England

Captain's log. Star date September 11, 2010. A day that is forever burned into our memories. Moment of silence.

Nothing exciting on the flights, but because my flight out of MSN left 30 minutes late, I had to run from Concourse E to Concourse C at O'Hare. If you don't have a map of the airport, that's probably close to a mile, with my backpack bouncing around and holding my bike helmet in my right arm. Think Heisman Trophy pose. I'm pretty sure I was the last person on the plane, but whatever. I made it, right?

Okay, fast forward through the trans-Atlantic flight. One of Paligap's sales reps picks me up and drives me to his house, where he tells me the van (think VW Sprinter) is what I'll be driving to Bristol. No problem, right? Wrong. Driving on the left side of the road is hard. Especially in a vehicle three times bigger than what I'm used to. Most cars over here are stick shift. My private car is stick shift, so no big deal right? Wrong again. Shifting with the left hand is not as easy as I thought. And they use miles per hour and yards instead of meters. Seriously? I thought Americans were the only ones who used those metrics. I've driven in Belgium, The Nederlands, France, and Switzerland over the past four months and this was the most challenging. Was it the lack of sleep or just that everything is backwards from what I'm used to? Got me. But it goes back to leaving your comfort zone. You can't grow if you don't push your boundaries. Until next time, Cheers!

It's been about seven weeks

So it must be time to travel again. This time I'm going to England. Sorry race fans, there's no racing this time. I'm headed to Bristol, which is about two hours west of London, to spend some quality time with our UK distributor. Stay tuned for more...