Transitioning from Work to Play

Today, Thursday, June 22, 2017, is my last day of work before I transition to vacation mode!  Today I worked at our Peterborough location which was about 3 hours north and west from where I had been working on Tuesday and Wednesday.  We wrapped up meetings around 5:30PM and I drove back to London where I am staying tonight.  The hotel is near the Heathrow airport because I have a 6:00AM departure tomorrow morning.  That means getting up around 3:15AM to drop off the rental car and getting to the airport 2 hours in advance of the flight.  I am scheduled to arrive in Zurich Switzerland at 8:40AM (1 hour time change).  After gathering my baggage, I will head to the train station for a 1.5 hour train ride to Thun, Switzerland which will serve as the starting and ending point of the tour. I hope all the travels tomorrow go according to plan!

Purchasing the train tickets was more of a hassle than I expected.  Charlie provided very simple-to-follow instructions.  I notified my credit card company I would be making international purchases so I thought I was set.  I tried several times to make the purchase but when I got to the last step to make the payment I kept getting the error message "payment failed" with no explanation.  I assumed I must have entered something wrong and tried again; same result.  I figured maybe the website is down and I tried the next day, same error message.  Thought maybe I need to try a different computer and different web browser; same response.  Cathy calls the credit card company thinking they are rejecting it because it is an international transaction; nope they haven't seen anything.  Well, at least that narrows it down some.  Next I try Google, sure enough - this is a common problem with credit cards from the U.S. Seems we like our reward cards and that means higher transaction fees for the seller and because of this some cards are not accepted.  A little more explanation somewhere on the website would have been helpful!  Now what?  I had options: 1) buy them when I arrive - the down side is not knowing how long the lines would be, 2) try to purchase by phone or 3) have someone in UK buy them for me. I selected option 3.  On Tuesday, one of my team members used his credit card to purchase the train tickets for me and I went to the ATM and got cash to pay him - thanks Mark!  Problem solved.

The plan for tomorrow is for the tour group to meet at the hotel at 3:30PM. This will be the first time I meet all the riders and our tour guide Charlie.  The bike rental shop will pick us all up and we get to collect (and pay for!) the bikes we will use for the next 11 days.  I will provide a picture of my bike after Friday.  The first day of "real" riding will be on Saturday.  We do several loops of riding on Saturday and return to Thun in case anyone needs to have any adjustments made to their bikes, adjust any luggage, or buy anything they forgot to bring along.  

I am so excited this trip is about to happen.  You do all the planning and it feels like it is so far away.  I was also busy preparing for the business segments of this trip to ensure they were successful.  Now it is time to transition to vacation mode and let the fun begin!



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I'm Home! - Thursday, July 13

Well, I am finally home!  It felt really good to sleep in a familiar bed after being on the road for almost a whole month (June 18 to July 13 = 26 days).  I left the Cummins office in Pune around 4:00PM and was to Mumbai airport shortly after 7:00PM.  Although the traffic in Mumbai was heavy there was no rain so it went well.  I felt very lucky with the weather during my time in India as the temperatures were very moderate (70's for lows and mid 80's for highs) and very little rain the entire week during the monsoon season.  However, the people in India really want and need some rain as the water levels in the reservoirs to supply water both for household and agriculture purposes are very low. Once at the airport it was time for the waiting game.  My flight departure was scheduled for 2:00AM. and they suggest being to the airport 3 hours early for international flights from India.  No sense in getting a room so I just hung out at the airport. ...
Read more

Saturday - July 8 - Lavasa

Image
What a great day today was seeing some sites in the Pune area.  Before I explain what all happened, I must first give many thanks to 2 of my Cummins colleagues here: Sneha and Pati. Sneha - I understand it was your suggestion that I visit Lavasa.  THANK YOU!!!!  It was a wonderful suggestion.  I really liked the opportunity to be outdoors and enjoy the beautiful site and fresh mountain air! Pati - THANK YOU for being my guide and for all the assistance with shopping (much more on this further in the blog).  Mission Accomplished!  I hope you got to spend some time with your daughter when you finally got home. At 9:30 this morning I was picked up at my hotel by the driver who then proceeded to pick up Pati and then we were on our way to Lavasa.  On our way to Lavasa, we went by the Cummins plant I visited the last time I was in India and is the first place that Pati worked when he joined Cummins; what a coincidence. Lavasa is a city that was ...
Read more

Nufenen, Furka, and Grimsel - The Final Passes

Image
Sorry my posting to this blog have been delayed.  After we were done with the tour, the next day I traveled to India for work and have been busy.  It is now Saturday morning in India and I am getting caught up on my blogging. July 4 was the final day of riding.  The Andermatt area (where we stayed last night) has some great passes to ride.  The Nufenen Pass is the second highest pass in Switzerland at 2,478 meters (8,129 feet).  Below are a couple of the views from the top. We got to spend a little more time at the top of the pass than we expected.  As we were about to leave, Joe was unable to find the keys for his bike.  He thought he left them in the ignition but they were not there.  He searched all his pockets and still no keys.  Other people searched his pockets and still no keys. We retraced his steps thinking maybe he dropped them somewhere and found nothing.  Joe went into the two stores at the top of the pass to see if anyo...
Read more