White Line Fever

Janet, a military officer in her late twenties, recently returned from a deployment to Afghanistan and was planning a trip to unwind and retrieve her primary mode of transportation four states away.  Her vision for the trip was to spend some time with several friends after being away for a year.  There was to be some catching up and a healthy bit of "letting their hair down".  Like other women in her situation, Janet would be considered upper middle class with additional income following a deployment.  She is young enough to get a little bit rowdy, but mature enough to draw the line long before anyone notices.

As someone that has planned complex military operations, involving unclear situations and short timelines, Janet thought planning the trip would be easy.  Little did she know, she was in for a surprise.

The diagram below shows how she went about planning the trip and the challenges she faced:

Janet is engaged to another military officer; one that is stationed at another military base in Georgia.  In preparation for her deployment, she placed all of her items in storage and sold her primary means of transportation.  It was getting old and she could use her fiance's car while he finished his deployment to take the time to shop for a good car deal.  With all the preparations made, she boarded a plane and started her trip to the mountains of Afghanistan.

She spent a little under a year in a very stressful and austere environment.  She had little access to things that we might take for granted like a certain kind of shampoo, or even a stable internet connection.  Though thankful for the experience, Janet was glad that her year was over and that it was time to come home.

After the usual activities necessary for a Soldier to reintegrate and get used to being back in the United States, Janet had to figure out how to get herself from point A to point B.  For her, this meant picking up her fiance's car from Georgia.  The trip would take at least four days to complete and the only time that she would have that much time available was during her post-deployment vacation of ten days.  She decided to combine the two trips and use the time to visit with friends and retrieve the car.

She started her planning.  The overall architecture of her trip was already set.  She had to get from Fort Hood, Texas to Fort Benning, Georgia to get the car.  She would then have to drive the car from there, 17 hours, back to her starting point.  The rest should have been easy.

Janet had several friends that lived along or very near the route she was taking back to Texas.  She had two friends in Georgia, three in Alabama, and two that were in Texas and were willing to take the trip with her.  She sent out a Facebook blast looking for volunteers.  Many welcomed her back and wished her luck, but had to decline for various reasons.  Her friends in Texas would have worked, but she had already seen them and wanted to take some of the vacation to see folks she hadn't seen in over a year.  It turned out that only one friend was able to make the trip.  Laurie would be able to ride from Alabama to Texas and fly back.  It was a one hour detour that was well worth it!

Janet decided that she would treat Laurie for her troubles and that they would make the most of the drive along I-10 by spending the night in one of the cities on a "girls' night".  Janet was met with her first obstacle.  She thought that it would be easy to choose what city to spend the night in.  She wanted one with great nightlife that was close to the highway and safe for two women.  She wanted it to be a large city to maximize the options.  This left her with Mobile, New Orleans, and Houston.  Should be easy to pick, right?  It turns out that it is hard to plan events in a city around a very specific travel time.  She figured that it would be easy to find something to do on a Saturday night, but there was nothing that was specific enough for the exact date she was going to be there.  Not being familiar with the cities also obscured the information that was available.  There was not as much information about safety as she would have liked.  She finally settled on New Orleans because it was about half way and had the most information available on the internet sites she visited.

With the city decided, Janet went about finding hotel accommodations.  After a year living in a tent, she wanted to splurge and spend the night in a high-end hotel.  She again went to the internet to quickly and easily book her lodging.  This time she was overloaded with a deluge of information.  Most of it was not even relevant to what she was looking for.  Her internet searches returned paid advertisements in areas outside of what she was looking for.  Others provided deals that were invalid during the one night she would be in town.  In some cases, multiple links led her back to the first website that wasn't helpful.  This part proved to be the biggest disappointment for Janet because she figured it would be easy to book a nice hotel in a location she wanted and it was one of the most important parts of her trip.  It was the part that was supposed to relax her.  This step was only frustrating her.

Finding activities was also more difficult than Janet predicted.  Again, the information was not relevant for what she was looking for.  Janet was not as concerned with activities as she was about the hotel.  She settled on a concert in a small venue that was close to the hotel mostly because of the proximity.  With this, she was glad to be done with her planning.

Janet and Laurie hit the road a little over two weeks later.  The trip was great and the they were able to spend some time relaxing and catching up.  The planning turned out to be the most stressful part of the trip.