After a busy weekend at home catching up on work after the SAILS “Boot Camp” program launch, I was on board a JetBlue flight at lunchtime and headed back for a third trip to New York in two months, hopefully to finalize plans for me to work with the luxury hotel prospect I’ve been pursuing for several months now. This is a very exciting and strong brand that has created a niche for itself, and one that I hope you will be reading about in many future entries of On The Road with Doug, as I personally connect with their destinations and their collection of properties.
The story of this trip is that unbeknownst to me, my meeting date and also location coincided with the peak of this fall’s United Nations meeting. When I realized this I was immediately concerned about traffic, knowing all too well about the street closures that the UN meetings cause, even during routine meetings. So imagine my stress when I found out that the very day of my meeting, and less than a dozen blocks away from my location, the UN’s speakers were to include President Bush, President Amidejian from Iran, Hugo Chavez from Venezula, and also President Talibani from Iraq. That’s a lot of “Karma” per square mile, if you will, and it made me once again feel a bit like Forest Gump, once again in the middle of major world events as they unfold. (I was in the air en route to New York at 8:30am on September 11, among other run-ins with history.)
After a very productive and positive meeting that ended right on time at 4pm, I was feeling optimistic about my carefully calculated plan as I entered the taxi that would take me to the Hertz rental car that I’d reserved on the West side of Manhattan – opposite the UN Meetings – all just ahead of rush hour traffic so that I could make my way across the George Washington Bridge and onward towards my next stop two hours away in the Poconos. It would be great to get there early and have a nice dinner and maybe a glass of wine.
Yet in crossing mid-town Manhattan on the side street I’d selected, it seemed to take forever. Then I suddenly realized that despite all my years of experience in living in and visiting to New York, I somehow managed to make a wrong turn and instead of heading West to escape the city, I had now ended up back on the East Side, just two blocks away from the start of the street closures! It was only due to my courage to take an illegal left turn heading north on 5th Avenue right in front of a police officer that I escaped the literal gridlock. But this delay cost me nearly an hour, and now I was smack in the middle of rush hour. So my two hour leisurely drive to The Poconos ended up taking nearly 4 hours.
Upon arrival at Split Rock I always get flashbacks to so many many trips, having been coming here to train for over 15 years and having had my wedding to Cathy Cook here just over a year ago. This time I was to deliver the train-the-trainer version of my new “Hostmasters” hospitality program. While presenting I looked out at the audience and was amazed to think about how many times some of them in particular had been through my training, and at the end when several of the participants such as Abdul, the restaurant manager and “The Chief” said it was my best training yet it meant a lot more than he could have imagined.
The good part was that I only had a half-day of training on day one, and having arrived so late from New York City I even got to sleep in. After the training I even had a little energy left for an evening jog in the cool fall mountain air. For the first time ever in over 15 years of coming to Split Rock Resort to train, I actually jogged all the way up to see the original “Split Rock” itself! Here’s a picture of me with the managers, including from left Abul, their Restaurant Manager, Rodriguez, their Assistant General Manager, and Sam Arnett, their VP/General Manager.
