“Welcome to the Winter Meetings”

My car broke today on the way to the airport.

My wife was driving, and we went over a set of train tracks and just like that: *crack* and our hood suddenly looked like we had tried to trap The Hulk in the engine, and he was letting us know in no uncertain terms that he did not plan to stay.

The place where the shocks are welded onto the frame just… broke. Snapped right off. The guy who ran the tow truck said he’d never seen anything like it before, and that we should call Ford. I called Lyft, and (barely) made it to my flight in time.

T.R. Sullivan told me during my first Spring Training that “Welcome to Spring Training” was the phrase for this sort of thing, because something disastrous always seems to happen back home when the writers are at Spring Training.

…Welcome to the Winter Meetings?

The flight was bumpy, which is fine. I can certainly see how it bothers some people, but I’ve been on a lot of bumpy flights and so far they have a 100% success rate when it comes to landing without crashing, so I don’t mind. The rental car was no problem—it even had working shocks—and I made it to my hotel around 10pm. But uh…

Okay, so a couple of things.

First off, I am not a picky sleeper. I don’t mind bare-bones hotel rooms. I was a touring musician for the better part of a decade, and I will 100% sleep on your couch if you’re cool with it. As long as it’s reasonably safe, I’m usually fine with saving a few bucks and sleeping wherever. But one of the beds wasn’t even made, and…

I wonder why there’s a container of Bug Spray in this r–

The girl at the front desk was apologetic, but fairly nonplussed. (“Whoops, I gave him one’a the bug rooms,” I can imagine her thinking). She graciously moved me to another room (which I checked thoroughly for guests), and everything’s fine now.

Orlando is wild. We’re close to Disney, so there are a bunch of gift shops in buildings that look like carnival fun houses. Here’s the best one I saw: it’s just a big dumb wizard, holding his hands out eternally like a store-brand Moses, ensuring that the battle for tacky consumerism wages in perpetuity.

By the time I found myself in Merlin the Cheap’s parking lot, I had blown up a car, made it through a bumpy flight, and survived a few moments in the bug den. I decided I felt invincible enough to trust Indian Cuisine from a Wizard-themed strip mall.

And it was great.

Welcome to the Winter Meetings.