Travel Karma...

Okay, I realize many of you think that I've fallen off the face of the planet. Sorry about that. Life has been CRAZY!!!!! Lots of travel, talks, a little sickness (still coughing...x3 weeks and 1 course of antibiotics), and life decisions have taken me out of the picture for the past couple of weeks.
Still can't talk about details yet...
What I will talk about is my travel karma. I'm convinced that my mentor (Larry) has passed his terrible travel karma on to me. Ever since I traveled with him last winter to Florida I have had the worst luck! Delayed flight, canceled flights, terrible routes with 3 connection... It has been absolutely comical! So last week (spring break) my grad school buddy Dave invited me up to Natick, Mass to give a talk for the thermal and mountain medicine division of USARIUM (arm medical research labs). I had a great time at the lab and even better than that was the time I spent catching up with Dave and his wonderful family.
Okay, so I get to the airport on Saturday and they tell me that my flight from Providence is delayed and I will likely miss my connection in DC. They are warning me that I will be on the standby list to fly from DC back into State College. I thought I'd get on the list and if it was going to be overnight that I'd just rent a car and drive the 3.5 hours back to SC, or call Mike and Priti and crash with them for the night. Turns out that I miss my connection and start hanging out waiting for the next flight an hour later. In the middle of all of this I met an interesting guy in the customer service line who was also trying to get to SC. He goes by Jack as his "american name" but is an electrical engineer from China, did his Ph.D. in the States, currently a post-doc at Berkeley and was trying to get to Penn State for a job interview for an assistant prof position (sound familiar). He was a bit nervous because he was number 6 on the standby list and I (because I smiled with the customer service guy and flirted just a bit) was number 1. The flight kept getting delayed and then we found out that it was overbooked and we would be lucky if we got out of DC before Monday (this was Saturday) because of heavy spring break travel. I have become a savy traveler and reserved a car from my iPhone while waiting in the customer service line and decided to just drive. I offered Jack a ride if he wanted to drive the 3.5 hours in the rain with me. He was so thankful! We had a wonderful conversation about China, science, jobs, post-docs, job negotiations, career balance, cooking... among other things. I dropped him off at his hotel and went on my way home. Interesting fellow...while it felt weird to have a stranger in the car with me I felt like I was doing the right thing.
After I got home and started to talk with Simon he told me he was concerned that I gave a strange man a ride to SC, and wondered who else I was talking with in the airport. Then it occured to me that I never even thought that this guy could have been an axe murderer! (Really he was small enough that I could have easily taken him)
So there you have it, my most adventurous travel story of the season. Was I out of my mind? Maybe Did I do something that I wouldn't normally do? Certainly Did it feel good to help out a guy who was nervous about his first job interview? Yes
My thought was that I could have been in his very position many times this year and if I could help him out then why not, even though he could have been an axe murderer. (his suit cased looked small enough)