A few weeks ago, something happened to me that I never thought would happen to me again–I was asked to fly up to Buffalo, NY and travel south to the Olean, NY for work.

Last year I spent five months in northern Pennsylvania for work. It was a long five months and most of the time; I would come home every other week. It took eight to ten hours to travel home: two and half hour drive from Pennsylvania to Buffalo, a flight to Cleveland, and a flight to Houston.

I still remember my last flight out of Buffalo– it was one of relief. The whole traveling thing to Buffalo and Pennsylvania was over. I thought, “Man, I’ll probably never see this airport again.” Statements like that come back to haunt you.

So my co-workers and I flew up to Buffalo on Super Bowl Sunday. We touched down in Buffalo and our plane stopped short of the jet way. Apparently, the jet way had frozen in place. So we had to walk off the plane into the cold: 0 degrees with a -20 wind chill. Oh yah that will wake up yup from a in-flight nap.

We grabbed one of three bags that arrived at the airport and made our way to our rental car (the other two were lost in Newark). The drive down to Olean was long and white. Snow covered the ground, it blew occasionally, and it completely covered the road. As we arrived into Olean, I just had that feeling–what am I doing here?

I’ve driven through many small towns in America and Olean was one of those towns I never thought I would ever see again. Yet, here I was at 1:30 in the morning and I was pulling into the hotel in the freezing cold. Thankfully, we completed our work and returned home to a much warmer Houston, Texas.

Sometimes life deals interesting cards. A return visit to Buffalo and Olean really turned out to be one of those interesting cards for me. It was one of those times, when you look down at what was dealt and say “huh?”