Sleep: I Don't Need No Stinkin' Sleep

All indications to the contrary, I haven't abandoned my blogging duties despite my not posting anything new in nearly a week. I've been on the road at a place without 24-hour WiFi access. Getting online pretty much entailed heading to some joint that offered it as I had a beer or a meal.

When I did manage to find a suitable place with Internet access, I spent those precious minutes catching up on e-mails and trading punches with editors. My philosophical opposition to coughing up $1,100 plus a year for a smart phone haunts me at such times.

I managed to sandwich six hours at home between my current trip and the one before it. It certainly wasn't long enough to post a blog. It was all I could do to unpack, pack, print boarding passes, scoop the cat box and catch three hours of sleep.

I arrived at the Greenville airport a few minutes after 10 p.m. from a trip to Illinois and returned at 4:40 the next morning for a trek to San Diego. I parked in the space I vacated the night before and reboarded the plane on which I landed in Greenville the night before.

It was my version of "Ground Hog Day."

This lightening turnaround was the product of my accepting a late invite from Mazda for its Mazda3 event in San Diego. It's what happens when a car company discovers at the last minute that it has a vacancy or two on an event and then scrambles around to fill it. I was the scramble-ee.

Because I had booked my Illinois trip a couple of months ago, the Mazda program dates weren't even on my radar. I would have flown home from the Illinois trip a day earlier had I known.

Of course, I could have always simply said, no, to Mazda's invite. I always have that option. I turned down the invite to another event the beginning of next week because it was just too much back-to-back traveling. They will have to soldier on without me.

In the meantime, I will deal with a long travel day following a day that involved a 3-hour drive across Illinois to Chicago and then two flights to get me from there home.

I have no doubt that I will live through it, but I'm more than ready for a little recliner-in-front-of-the-TV time.