Keeping up with the usual flow of information sharing in the hopeless effort of saving others the troubles and perils I go through, I'm documenting here my first trip to Redmond, Seattle

Last week I had 2 full days of meetings at Microsoft campus in Redmond, regarding this project our company is participating on called Microsoft Citizen Service Platform (let's call it CSP ). It was really nice to meet all the folks and talk about über-geek stuff, with special kudos for the OCS guys, which won the «best meeting award»!

For CSP we'll be delivering a Lite version of our solution for Board Meetings on its edition for the Local and Regional Government market, the CaveDigital Board Meeting 2007, Town Hall Edition and which is in use at Porto Town Hall Council (the second largest iconic Portuguese city (also known as Oporto)).

But let's get back to the reason why I'm writing here about, which is, how I got there, and that's where the fun begins.

It all started on the previous week - my flights were booked and the person in charge for making that happen emailed me my e-ticket.

Saturday I hopped on the first flight from Lisbon to Frankfurt...

At Frankfurt they flagged me for security check... so there I was waiting for 10 mins looking at a guy on the phone holding my passport and thinking «hey, this isn't my first trip to the US». Good thing from this was that on my next flight to San Francisco they moved my seat to Business Class.

At San Francisco I realized my luggage didn't fly there with me... Tried to fill in a bagage claim but they instructed me to do so on my final destination... so I hopped on my next flight to Redmond/Bend... «Bend?» I inquired myself... «just go with the flow».

When I landed at Redmond Municipal Airport, the first thought on my mind was «hummm... this seems a tad smaller than I expected».

I procceded to fill in a bagage claim and while giving the hotel address the lady behind the counter inquired «this address is Washington state... we're in Oregon». A sinapse storm occured instantly as my brain reached for the stored geographical represenation of North America. «Humm, Seattle isn't in Oregon ... what's going on here?»... So I procceded to explain that I was heading for the Microsoft campus at Redmond, Seattle, and that's when it hit me: «I'M ON THE WRONG REDMOND!»

Lucky me, NOT!, being a Municipal Airport, they closed at night, so I could only catch a flight to Seattle on next early morning. The people there were really nice though, and the lady behind the counter was kind enough to give me a ride to a nice dinner called Sharis (or something similar to that)  where I sat for a few hours and got back to the airport. People at the «wrong» Redmond are actually really nice

After arriving at the airport and checking-in, guess what? They flagged me for security check again, yes, at  municipal airport ... So there I waited for 10 minutes again, while they went through my backpack and laptop zzzz ...

Finally hopped on the flight to Seattle and there, got a cab to my final destination: Redmond, Seattle, Washington State

Bottom line, it took me more than 30 hours to get there, so... make sure they send you to the right Redmond.

Cheers!