I'm beginning to understand why some people with supposedly glamorous jobs decide to retire anyway. [View all]

I'm just getting tired of this becoming the rule rather than the exception.

I have three work appointments down in Paris today. I got up at 4 A.M. to be there in time to make them, and still get back by 11 PM tonight. I have family obligations in northern Germany tomorrow in one of those places so off the beaten track that most GPS programs protest "You can't be serious!" when you try to feed in the location. My wife knows because it's where she is from. Sort of like the Marshall's Service needing Raylan Givens to find places in Harlan County.

So, I got up at 4 AM, took a shower, snatched up the small suitcase and two shoulder bags, poured down the tea my wife made for me, and we rushed off to her car so she could drive me to the airport train station. The train station in our town has been closed for months, and part of the local route has been shut down for repairs for over two years.

Because of track repairs going on for months (sometimes years) longer than originally announced, I planned to make the 5:32 train from the airport down to Köln (Cologne), where, if on time, I would have 30 minutes to make the fast train down to Paris. I got to the track ten minutes before departure. Oh, crap, I had left my ticket for Köln on the table in the house! But there was an automatic ticket machine for nearby towns in the station. At 30 to 40 minutes, Cologne is considered "nearby." So, with 4 minutes to spare before the 5:32 train, I bought another ticket (overpriced, but my fault, so I shut up). I rushed back down to the track to find that my 5:32 train to Cologne was delayed by 40 minutes. But, but, but.....I only had 30 minutes in Köln to make the train to Paris! The NEXT train to Köln was listed as on time, so I decided to risk it. Miraculously, it got to Cologne at 6:32. The train to Paris was scheduled to depart at 6:44, and I only needed 2 minutes to get to the right track if I hauled ass. I did, and got there to find that the train to Paris was delayed by half an hour due to: 1.) a police action, or 2.) construction work on the tracks, or 3.) technical difficulties with the train. I think it depended on what make of car the announcer had just seen out the window. I heard all three in the space of 20 minutes. So, I was stuck out in the cold for half an hour, on the crowded track with a few hundred other frustrated passengers. It finally arrived a little over half an hour late.

So, I'm looking at (probably) trying to get 6 hours' worth of work compressed into 5, and hoping to get back home by midnight so I can join my wife tomorrow up in the tiny farm country village where her distant cousin is having his 50th wedding anniversary party.

But so far, the train to Paris from Köln is half an hour late. and we're somewhere just past Brussels in Belgium, where the train stops before the last hi-speed leg of Brussels to Paris in 80 minutes (used to take 3 hours). It's barely 9:20. I'm already beat, and I can't even start work down in France for another two hours. I do have three French-speaking co-workers (one in Geneva, Switzerland and two in Paris). However, they all had other things to do today, and I can't ask the guys in the Dutch office or the London office to run over here because their French is not up to the job(s) at hand. I'm pretty close to fluent, so I'm elected, as usual.

I think even James Bond must have felt like going on strike every now and then. That stuff in the movies was always sanitized, (although, some 50 years ago, I did get the beautiful girl, and she still is).

It's not always this crazy. On days like today, that is no consolation.