[lang_en]Our trip to CHA Winter 2009[/lang_en]

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We want to share with you the story of our adventure (or should that be misadventure?) to this year’s CHA in Anaheim.

CHA is the Craft and Hobby Association trade show which runs every January in Anaheim, California.  This is the main show of the year in which craft manufacturer’s present their latest collections.  There is also a smaller CHA in the summer which moves location.  CHA is a big event in the crafts world and you’ll find everyone there; manufacturers presenting their products, artisists displaying their designs and looking to collaborate with manufacturers, retailers both displaying and purchasing, agents, publishers, you name it!

Our trip began at 9am on Saturday 24th January, Geneva airport, Switzerland.  Although the show opens on Saturday, we decided that attending from Sunday morning would be enough.  Alas, as it turned out, not even that was going to happen…

[/lang_en][lang_en]On that Saturday morning we awoke to discover a couple of inches of snow already on the ground and still falling.  “Surely we’re not going to have a problem at the airport?!”, we hoped.  After a stressful taxi ride to the airport (he arrived 1 hour late) and a long wait in the check-in queue, sure enough the announcement came.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, the airport is closing because of intrumentation failure, please contact your service agent for more information.”

In an instant hundreds of travellers formed a crowd at a desk staffed with only 2 people.  It was kind of strange to have an airport in the Swiss alps closing because of only a couple of inches of snow!

C’est la vie ! We always look on the bright side.  Getting stressed about something you can’t change isn’t going to improve the situation.  So stay cool. Moments like that are always opportunities to discuss with new people instead. So we got talking to Jim, a retired army officer from the US army who was skiing in Chamonix (and dare we way it, a bit of a ladies man lol).  Like us, he doesn’t get stressed about such things.  All this meant was that he would spend a few hours waiting for a connection in Paris (not the worst place in the world to be stuck) and arrive at his appartment in Manhattan a few hours later. Enjoy life, it’s too short to be stressed!

We eventually made it out of Geneva that day, but of course missed our flight to Los Angeles.  A night in Paris, some great seafood, and we were off on Sunday morning instead.  We had meetings scheduled for Sunday. As soon as we touched down in LA on Sunday, we quickly called around and re-organised. By now we had been travelling 42 hours with 6 hours of sleep in Paris but we were on form! We drove to Anaheim, checked-in and after a quick freshen-up we had an even meeting of 3 hours.  Talk about burning the candle at both ends?

More soon!

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