It all sounds glamorous to fly on business trips and use a corporate card, but frankly, the less often I use them the better.

I had agreed to support a client that was delivering some education over the weekend, but I had no idea what it would involve. I got a call late Friday night that there were some issues with our education on their systems. So, Saturday morning I showed up at the office and talked to the customer and it turned out that they were seeing the issue on their systems there, but I didn’t see any problems here. “Looks like you’re going to need to fly up here to solve the problem”, the customer said.

“OK, I’ll catch the first plane out Sunday morning”, I responded.

“No,” was the response, “you need to catch the next plane out today.”

So, I had Adriene pack my bags and I was off to Richmond, Virginia. About 15 hours of debugging and testing later, I had the problem solved. That’s all well and good, and I stuck around in Richmond for a couple days just to make sure there weren’t any more unforeseen problems. I had no Internet at the client’s office and for some reason my laptop would connect with the hotel’s wireless, so I was isolated from the net world for a couple days.

The trip up was pretty stressful and I really wasn’t paying attention to much on the way to Richmond, just making sure I got on the right plane, get the rental car, drive to the right place, figure out how I’m going to code myself out of this mess and such. The trip back to Atlanta was a little more relaxed so I had time to sit and watch a father and his two kids wait excitedly for their mother to come through the gate of a plane. A woman noticed I was reading Searching For God Knows What and asked if I liked Don Miller. I said yes and she smiled and pulled out a copy of Blue Like Jazz out of her bag.

Normally, when I travel for business, I feel like a five year old child walking through the airport dragging my coat behind me, leaving a trail behind me of clothes, dropping a mitten somewhere and in general looking very dazed and lost. Every trip I manage to lose or forget something. My old company badge is somewhere in Austin and somebody in Bloomington, Illinois got a freel laptop power recharger courtesy of forgetful me.

When I left my car at the airport, I couldn’t remember if I had locked the door or not. I worried the entired time up to Richmond and back that I had left the car unlocked. I was sure the car would be broken into or worse, stolen. I rode the airport shuttle back to the parking lot when I returned to Atlanta and the driver drove up to location 8-49 and said, “this is your car, sir?” and there was a green Ford truck in the spot.

“This is the spot, but this isn’t my car.” I started to panic. I knew this was going to happen.

“Don’t worry, sir, we’ll find your car” and the driver graciously drove up and done the rows of the large parking lot hoping to find my car, but I had a sinking feeling it was gone. After working 32 hours over three days, I wasn’t prepared to deal with a stolen car. When we passed spot 8- ONE FOUR NINE, there it was and visions of calling Adriene to drive all the way to the airport to get me and filling out forms for the Atlanta police vanished from my mind. I got out and walked up to the driver side door and sure enough, I had left it unlocked the entire time I was gone. Thankfully, nothing in the car had been disturbed.

I collapsed in the car with exhaustion and relief. Once again, I had forgotten something on a business trip, but this time it was wouldn’t cost me.

Some days maybe I do muster up enough faith to believe that 1 Corinthians 10:13 is true.