If you'd asked me just a year ago "Molly, how would you like a job where Robert travels often and sees the world without you?" I would have smacked you in the heiny. OK, maybe not, but I would have thought about it.
And yet here we are! He already has enough Alaska miles to get one cheapie deapie free seat (I know that sounds funny, but they have different "classes" of free tickets?) roundtrip domestic US. I'm learning so much about codeshare flights!
And thankfully I was here, b/c he and his traveling/testing partner (from another country) managed to get on the wrong train, didn't have a train map, and I guess there's no conductor. So I got to try to help him, as the phone was cutting in and out (reception on a train) and we were having email delays with his work iphone...bleargh. But I got them almost immediately on a train going the right way; they were only looking at one schedule, and thought they'd have to find a hotel at the small town where they got off the train (after realizing they were in the wrong one and after our phones cut off the second time). What on earth would those boys do without me?
His coworkers is driving him batty. Trips like this are interesting. They have to get out and about to see if the products work, and they don't have certain places to go (on this trip at least). So really, they can run around and be touristy, stopping in every half hour or so to check out the devices.
The coworker has things he wants to do, but isn't communicating it to Robert...and isn't asking questions...for instance, he's a big sports fan and wanted a jersey with his brother's fave player's name on it. I gave them directions to get to the stadium where this team plays when Robert told me how much P likes this national sport, then they went to the store at the stadium, and the jerseys didn't have names on them. They left, without the guy asking about it.
So here they are days later, in this awesome little town that people visit year round, Robert's taking pictures of everything, and the guy goes to a sporting store of all places (and this is this guy's only trip to this country, he says). Well it was good he went there, because NOW he finds out that the jerseys don't come with names on, but you simply request that the player's name is put on specially. He could have bought a jersey *from the stadium*, but he didn't ask. I know if I were a big, for example, baseball fan and loved the Mariners, I would prefer to buy one from the Mariners field store, not just some random Joe's sporting equipment store.
And that, while minor, is how he's been the days they've been there so far.
Yielded a big apology from Robert, though, because sometimes he's like that about travel with me. He now realizes how difficult it makes it for others. Nothing is worse, for the "planner", to be told at the END of the trip that they'd skipped the things the other person really really wanted to do, when they had never told the "planner" they wanted to do those things...