Where I Did Not Go Today

St. Louis. For months I have been looking forward to speaking at a plenary session of the Community Development Society, which had invited me to talk about "Grow, Change, or Die." In particular, I wanted to talk about the branding research we did last year. As difficult as it was to talk about Opportunity Finance rather than community development finance in our network, I could not quite imagine what it would be like to cover the same material with the Community Development Society.

I may never know.

Last night, at about 3 a.m., the phone rang. Never a good thing. My wife quickly assumed that either (a) something was wrong with one of our kids, both of whom went off to overnight camp yesterday or (b) something was wrong with my parents, who live nearby.

The good news is that it was neither (a) nor (b). The bad news was that US Airways had canceled my flight to St. Louis this morning. I spent close to an hour on the phone with US Airways before they re-booked me on an American Airlines flight that would have, if everything had gone well, delivered me to St. Louis barely in time to speak.

When I got to the airport--early, because something just might go wrong--American wouldn't honor my ticket even though they had the booking. It only took several trips back-and-forth between Terminals A and B through pouring rain (because of construction, you can not connect indoors) to work that out. Because of the ticket switch, however, I was flagged for an intensive security search--my first since I flew to Europe right after 9/11.

Several hours later, my flight was available for boarding... but the timing was tricky. If the plane took off quickly, I could still make the speech in St. Louis. With a long line of planes backed up on the tarmac, however, I had my doubts. I was standing at the door to the jetway trying to decide what to do when I heard the words, "Indefinite delay..."

I called my kind and understanding hosts in St. Louis and explained. They were gracious. I agreed to send along a prepared text that they might read, in lieu of my speech. (In theory, I am speaking in St. Louis at the very moment I am writing this.)

If you want to read what I planned to say, or did say, or might be saying right now, you can download my prepared remarks (Download cds_for_blog.doc).

One last thing: Remind me to tell you about what happened when I went back to get my car to drive back to the office and the car was not there.

Comments

[Elsie Meeks]

I have been in the office for too long now (a whole week?) and have even resorted to looking at your blog. It is entertaining and information.