{"id":12436,"date":"2025-01-11T11:51:06","date_gmt":"2025-01-11T16:51:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/?p=12436"},"modified":"2025-01-11T11:53:19","modified_gmt":"2025-01-11T16:53:19","slug":"the-worst-day-trip-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2025\/01\/11\/the-worst-day-trip-ever\/","title":{"rendered":"The Worst day Trip Ever"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I consider myself to be a world traveler. Heck, in the last 12 months I\u2019ve been to 18 states, 6 provinces, 8 countries or maybe more and even my daughter has been to more countries in the last year than many will visit in their lives and she just turned one.<\/p>\n

I resigned from my position at my last company in Charlotte NC a few weeks ago and I\u2019ve moved my entire family back to New Hampshire and started a new role. This last role, like some before it had spawned a culture of coworkers calling me \u201cthe most interesting man\u201d and after I rode my motorcycle to the arctic circle and then went on a 6 country Euro-Trip with my daughter, a coworker said \u201cyou did more in one summer than some people do in decades\u201d.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s fair to say that I had to uphold this reputation as long as possible. So, the annual holiday party at my last job which was set to take place January 10th (today) was a party that I couldn\u2019t miss. Not only is it a great party with all you can eat and drink and awesome tunes as well as dancing and just overall a fancy affair but since I resigned a week before the party I certainly couldn\u2019t miss the chance to hang out socially with my coworkers one last time.<\/p>\n

So I secretly booked a flight and hotel a month ago and told just one coworker who put me as her Plus One for the event just in case the events team got word I had left the company and revoked my RSVP from December.<\/p>\n

At 3AM on January 10th, I drove 2 hours south to the airport in a snow storm, hopped on a flight, arrived in Charlotte at 8AM, arrived at my hotel and checked into a room by 8:40AM just in time to start a remote work day at my now current job as approved by my new manager.<\/p>\n

At 9:20AM I received a text from my coworker, \u201cthe holiday party has been cancelled\u201d<\/p>\n

There was a risk of this happening. See, 4 days ago, Charlotte began to have winter storm warnings which everyone ignored. The joke is that for the 2 years I lived here and 2 years before that, Charlotte had not received any snow so when warnings of a snow storm began, everyone ignored it. American Airlines and Marriot gave me the opportunity to get a full refund but I refused and the holiday party was still on as of the day before. In fact, our CEO and many west coast leaders flew in for the event or so I hear.<\/p>\n

For the first time in 4 years, by 3PM I looked out of my hotel room and it was snowing in Charlotte.<\/p>\n

I finally revealed to my team via text message that I had intended to surprise all of them for one last party for which we\u2019d say our official goodbyes since I really left during Winter break and it just didn\u2019t feel like a proper farewell. A few people messaged me about trying to rally coworkers for a party tonight in downtown but slowly people fell off as they realized just how much ice had fallen and how dangerous a drive downtown would have been.<\/p>\n

By 5PM it was clear that I would be spending the evening alone.<\/p>\n

The truth is, I love nights alone and I guess you could say this was a really great night had I not gotten over the moon excited about seeing my coworkers one last time and said goodbyes at a really great (seriously, it\u2019s a nice time) party.<\/p>\n

I wrapped up my current job at 5:15 and walked to Optimist Hall. As I walked up, they put a sign up saying they had closed early so dinner options were now slim. I went to my favorite brewery and they had already closed but said I could drink while they cleaned up and they didn\u2019t charge me. That was really kind as I had been a patron regularly for 2 years and they heard my sob story and really took care of me. I walked a few more blocks to a pizza shop and that was closed so I hung out at an empty wine bar trying to find a place to eat and decided I\u2019d ride a scooter over to a neighborhood that was always hopping on Fridays (Plaza Midwood) and when I arrived, 5 of the 6 restaurants had closed. Uber also shut down the Lime scooter network so I had to walk the 2 miles to get there in the ice rain.<\/p>\n

After I had 3 slices of Luke-warm pizza from the only place open in Plaza Midwood, i was able to hail a cab back to my hotel where I walked up to the party district and went to 6 places that were all dead and finally just had a Guinness and talked to a guy from New York who also flew in for a corporate event and was stranded as well as 2 women who were out celebrating one of their birthdays and drowning their sorrows.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s almost midnight and I\u2019m back at my hotel having killed 6 hours of time walking \/ riding \/ taxiing around town solo eating cold pizza and drinking beer in the very cold ice-storm of 2025 in Charlotte North Carolina.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t live here anymore but here I am.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s really a shame that things didn\u2019t go differently. A couple of coworkers want to attempt breakfast or coffee tomorrow but I board my flight at noon and the snow storm is supposed to continue until 8AM and then cleanup will start by city crews. I don\u2019t expect I\u2019ll get to see any of my coworkers on this trip and I\u2019m just really disappointed.<\/p>\n

Obviously what was going to be a fun \u201cmost interesting man\u201d wrap up by crashing the holiday party would just look really lame if I crashed the one a year from now so I won\u2019t be doing that but this year, it would have been really hilarious.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve done a lot of quick solo trips for really basic reasons and this was going to be a lot of fun but it wasn\u2019t. Oh well, it\u2019s just time and money. Sigh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I consider myself to be a world traveler. Heck, in the last 12 months I\u2019ve been to 18…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"csco_singular_sidebar":"","csco_page_header_type":"","csco_custom_appearance":"","csco_disable_excerpt_posts_layout":false,"csco_page_load_nextpost":"","csco_post_video_location":[],"csco_post_video_location_hash":"","csco_post_video_url":"","csco_post_video_bg_start_time":0,"csco_post_video_bg_end_time":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18,14],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-12436","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-travel","7":"category-rants","8":"cs-entry","9":"cs-video-wrap"},"apple_news_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pb3IC4-3eA","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":13038,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2025\/08\/23\/life-39\/","url_meta":{"origin":12436,"position":0},"title":"Life: 39","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"August 23, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"ChatGPT didn\u2019t do this year justice and even though it is a tradition that I write this around my birthday, I also feel really great about the timing. The timing could not be better to share an annual life update. Despite everything ahead, I\u2019ll do my best to look back\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Life"","block_context":{"text":"Life","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/life\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7790,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2015\/03\/30\/travel-back-to-europe-for-a-beer-super-tour\/","url_meta":{"origin":12436,"position":1},"title":"\u2605 Travel: Back to Europe for a beer Super-Tour","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"March 30, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"I returned from Europe 4 weeks ago and I\u2019ll be going back in 4 weeks. This is the fastest turnaround between Euro-Trips ever. Earlier this year, I was at this cross-roads between attending the Alvinne Craft Beer Festival or Tour de Gueuze. Why not both? 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I still managed to spend 4 hours in our Belgian office\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Photography"","block_context":{"text":"Photography","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/photography\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Spent the day at Cantillon in Brussels","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm8.staticflickr.com\/7283\/16571814528_c2d5f5a516_z.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm8.staticflickr.com\/7283\/16571814528_c2d5f5a516_z.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm8.staticflickr.com\/7283\/16571814528_c2d5f5a516_z.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":13017,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2025\/08\/13\/life-39-generated-by-chatgpt\/","url_meta":{"origin":12436,"position":3},"title":"Life: 39 – Generated by ChatGPT","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"August 13, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Preface: I shared every previous annual update along with blog posts from the last 12 months in an XML file to ChatGPT version 5 and asked it to write this post for me. I'm working on the real annual post now but this was an interesting experiment that still missed\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Life"","block_context":{"text":"Life","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/life\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4503,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2015\/03\/01\/life-spring-14-update\/","url_meta":{"origin":12436,"position":4},"title":"Life: Spring ’14 Update","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"March 1, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been a lazy blogger as of late but I'm still sharing some thoughts and opinions on various topics. The link-list style of blogging works well for some authors since there is always fresh content and you're taking a topic and expanding upon it or adding some personal flair. The\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Life"","block_context":{"text":"Life","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/life\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Ice Fishing out on the Lake - February 2015","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm8.staticflickr.com\/7291\/16477505715_63657bf602_z.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm8.staticflickr.com\/7291\/16477505715_63657bf602_z.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm8.staticflickr.com\/7291\/16477505715_63657bf602_z.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":3076,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2015\/11\/04\/beer-news-top-brewery-road-trip-routed-algorithmically\/","url_meta":{"origin":12436,"position":5},"title":"\u2605 Beer News: “Top Brewery Road Trip, Routed Algorithmically”","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"November 4, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"via Flowing Data: Community beer and brewery review site RateBeer puts out a list every year of the top 100 breweries in the world, \u201caccording to reviews taken last year and weighted by performance within and outside of style, balanced by indicators of depth.\u201d From this year's list, 72 of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Beer News"","block_context":{"text":"Beer News","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/beer\/beer-news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12436\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}