Write a Blog Post for Tuesday? Fine, Okay, Sure…

Traveling is exhausting. Who’s with me on this one?

I was majorly lucky to be able to take a large amount of time off over the holidays, but now it’s time to get back to work, and by the time you guys are reading this post I am probably already completely fatigued because of the damn travel. Let me paint a picture for you guys…

I have to leave my house sometime in the late afternoon/early evening on Sunday; kisses and hugs from the little missy and them I’m on the road for approximately two hours in order to get to my parents’ house, which is significantly closer to the airport than my house.
I have to wake up at 3 am. No one should ever have to wake up at 3 am.
At 3:30 am, once I’ve managed to make myself look somewhat human, I get a ride to the airport, which takes about half an hour.
I slug through security and a coworker friend and I try not to pass out while waiting at the gate.
We hop on the first plane, which is about a 2-1/2 hour flight to Toronto.
We’re usually in Toronto for a half hour or less before our next flight starts boarding, so no time for silly things like food; just a quick trip to the bathroom and a jog to the gate to board the second flight.
Said second flight is a 4-1/2 hour flight to Edmonton.
We arrive in Edmonton somewhere between 10:30 and 11 in that time zone (keeping in mind that Alberta’s time zone is three hours behind ours at home, so we’re three hours more tired than you’re imagining we should be). We then get to hang around in Edmonton until 3 pm.
At approximately 3:15 pm we hop on a charter flight that takes us on a one-hour trip North to land in the oil sands.
We arrive at an air strip in the middle of nowhere and have to wait anywhere between fifteen minutes and an hour for our bus to come.
The bus takes us on an hour drive down mostly dirt road to our camp.
If we’re lucky it takes about half an hour to check in and get our luggage and be in our rooms.
All total, from waking up in the morning until flopping down in a camp bed in the evening, it’s approximately 17 hours of travel, and since I had to get up at 3 am I’m running on something like 4-5 hours of sleep (IF I slept well, which I usually don’t).

And what’s really amazing? That’s not the worst…on the day we go home it’s a significantly longer trip, running approximately 22 hours from leaving site to arriving home.

The point is, traveling is exhausting, and I find it really rather amazing that I can think after one of these days, never mind write a poignant and interesting blog post. So you’ll excuse me if I just curl up and pass out on the computer right about n-

zzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZ……