What a diet free of hydrogenated corn syrup does to your attention to detail

Last week and over the weekend, I traveled to southern California to attend this insanely huge trade show where all the new natural and organic food, health & beauty products are revealed. It was a fun time but I was completely wiped out since I have to represent our clients in endless media interviews, not to mention there's not a real, legitimate chemical-packed junk food within a 50-mile radius. And I'm just not used to that. It's kind of a chaotic scene with more than 50,000 people going to this show; getting a cab in Anaheim can be a little tricky once it's time to head to the airport.

So when it came time to go home Sunday afternoon, imagine my happiness when two of my friends offered to drive me to the airport. No waiting in a cab line, just a nice little ride to the 'port with friends. Sounds good to me.

My two friends, Greg and Nico, were leaving Anaheim to go to another city for meetings with our shared client the next day and offered to drop me off since it was on their way. We headed out to the airport about two hours before my 4:59 p.m. flight. Look at me, California! For once I am on time.

We leave my hotel where I had to pick up my bags, and hop right onto the freeway. About a half-hour later, I see a site similar to this:

We're at LAX, the world's fifth-busiest airport. Awesome. Except one thing: I AM NOT FLYING OUT OF LAX. I'm flying out of Orange County's John Wayne Airport. You know? The one 40 MINUTES IN THE OTHER DIRECTION?

Oops.

Apparently in my exhausted state, I overlooked the fact that I didn't tell my friends out of what airport I was flying. I never fly into LAX, so it wasn't even on my radar. They, as luck would have it, always fly into LAX so John Wayne wasn't on theirs.

We immediately flipped around and headed back down the freeway, with me on the phone to Delta the entire way where I was informed that all flights to SLC from both John Wayne and LAX were booked the rest of the night.

Thanks to Greg's superb driving skills, and miracle of miracles--the fact that there was absolutely NO traffic, I made it onto the plane just as they were doing their "last call" page telling me to get my sweaty-from-running-in-3inch-heels-while-carrying-too-much-stuff arse onto the plane or else I was staying in Californ-i-a until the next day (which, I admit there are worse things in the world than being stranded in SoCal, but I really needed to get home).

I made it.

And, just to make it clear that I wasn't in sunny Cali any more, I was greeted upon arrival with a nice cool blast of freezing air. Apparently Old Man Winter decided to head back to SLC, too.