A certain Dela employee's pants are proably one fire right now
The conference was good overall. I arrived home to the hellish orange glare of a Baltimore night at 11:30 on Monday, an hour and a half late. I adjusted to California time just in time to come home, so I'm still recovering from the jet lag. Getting here was no mean trick, though.
I left the retreat grounds with
krazykat at 6:30 AM PST on a shuttle bus to the airport in San Hose. We arrived around 8:30 in plenty of time to check in for our Delta flight (more time than we would have liked, but the shuttle bus only left every couple of hours). We checked in with mostly no incident (other than a mildly ditzy attendant who didn't know how to receipts, but the one for the first leg of the trip had the total amount). The San Jose airport is very small and they only have food available before you go through security. Fortunately they don't hassle you about bring said food through and the little snack shop had a relatively healthy selection (trail mix, wheat thins and dried fruit in addition to snickers bars and doritos). I grabbed breakfast at the Burger King and then stocked up on wheat thins and dried peaches since the ride to Atlanta is six hours with only a snack, and we were only scheduled to be in the Atlanta airport 40 minutes before takeoff for Baltimore. I briefly flipped out when I thought I lost my wallet, but I had just sleepily tucked it into one of the pockets of the bag I rarely use and I eventually found it after going through a third or fourth time. We went through security with plenty of time to spare. When we got to the other side we discovered that there was only one bathroom (which apparently used to only for TSA personel, but I assume Federal regulations changed that). Fortunately, I have a bladder of iron while traveling, so I was fine.
The flight took off on time much to our relief. The movie was the same one United was showing on the way over, so I ended up reading Yaya Sisterhood pretty much from cover to cover (more on my reaction to that in another post). The flight was uneventful until we approached Atlanta, where we circled for an extra fifteen minutes. A minor delay, but our connection was tight enough that it was stressful, particularly when we checked our tickets and found that we were arriving at gate A31 and leaving from E7. For those of you that have never been in the Atlanta airport, A and E terminal are separated by about a mile, though fortunately most of that is covered by their tram system. We hoped that the bad weather would delay our flight enough to give us breathing room, so krazykatcalled her fiance to ask him to check on the website to see if our flight was listed as on time and if the gate listing was correct. Yes and yes. We were out of the plane in Atlanta at 7:30 EST, 30 minutes befre our connection was scheduled to take off. We ran most of the distance not covered by the tram and arrived panting to find that our flight was not even at the gate yet. We sat down, relieved but grumbling as it was pretty obvious we needn't have rushed. About 10 or fifteen minutes later, a delta employee announced that the flight crew is all there, and the plane will be arriving any moment. It's apparently continuing on to an international destination, so cleaning might take a bit longer than usual. I pulled out my book and read for another 10 or so minutes. Then the delta employee made another announcement. Apparently, our scheduled copilot was still in Oklahoma city due to delays there. They estimate d that his flight would take 1-1.5 hours, and it hadn't taken off yet. They told us they now estimatde that we will take off around....10:30 to 11. We groaned, and I call Jon to let him know what was going on. They told us to go have a leasurely dinner, so we tromped off, half anticipating the flight was going to end up cancelled. We considered going to the sit down TGI Fridays at the other end of the airport, Luckily,
krazykatspotted someone else from our flight coming back from the washroom and told him the announcement. He offered to grab food with us, so we headed to the food court in E terminal. I'd just gotten my burrito when
krazykat ran up and told they've announced boarding for our flight. We booked it back to our gate. As it turned out they hadn't begun boarding, but they did make a boarding announcement about 10 minutes later. Lucky for us; we got to go home earlier. Not so lucky for the people that took them at their word and went further afield for food. The moral of the story? Never trust an airline employee. Ever.
I left the retreat grounds with
krazykat at 6:30 AM PST on a shuttle bus to the airport in San Hose. We arrived around 8:30 in plenty of time to check in for our Delta flight (more time than we would have liked, but the shuttle bus only left every couple of hours). We checked in with mostly no incident (other than a mildly ditzy attendant who didn't know how to receipts, but the one for the first leg of the trip had the total amount). The San Jose airport is very small and they only have food available before you go through security. Fortunately they don't hassle you about bring said food through and the little snack shop had a relatively healthy selection (trail mix, wheat thins and dried fruit in addition to snickers bars and doritos). I grabbed breakfast at the Burger King and then stocked up on wheat thins and dried peaches since the ride to Atlanta is six hours with only a snack, and we were only scheduled to be in the Atlanta airport 40 minutes before takeoff for Baltimore. I briefly flipped out when I thought I lost my wallet, but I had just sleepily tucked it into one of the pockets of the bag I rarely use and I eventually found it after going through a third or fourth time. We went through security with plenty of time to spare. When we got to the other side we discovered that there was only one bathroom (which apparently used to only for TSA personel, but I assume Federal regulations changed that). Fortunately, I have a bladder of iron while traveling, so I was fine.
The flight took off on time much to our relief. The movie was the same one United was showing on the way over, so I ended up reading Yaya Sisterhood pretty much from cover to cover (more on my reaction to that in another post). The flight was uneventful until we approached Atlanta, where we circled for an extra fifteen minutes. A minor delay, but our connection was tight enough that it was stressful, particularly when we checked our tickets and found that we were arriving at gate A31 and leaving from E7. For those of you that have never been in the Atlanta airport, A and E terminal are separated by about a mile, though fortunately most of that is covered by their tram system. We hoped that the bad weather would delay our flight enough to give us breathing room, so krazykatcalled her fiance to ask him to check on the website to see if our flight was listed as on time and if the gate listing was correct. Yes and yes. We were out of the plane in Atlanta at 7:30 EST, 30 minutes befre our connection was scheduled to take off. We ran most of the distance not covered by the tram and arrived panting to find that our flight was not even at the gate yet. We sat down, relieved but grumbling as it was pretty obvious we needn't have rushed. About 10 or fifteen minutes later, a delta employee announced that the flight crew is all there, and the plane will be arriving any moment. It's apparently continuing on to an international destination, so cleaning might take a bit longer than usual. I pulled out my book and read for another 10 or so minutes. Then the delta employee made another announcement. Apparently, our scheduled copilot was still in Oklahoma city due to delays there. They estimate d that his flight would take 1-1.5 hours, and it hadn't taken off yet. They told us they now estimatde that we will take off around....10:30 to 11. We groaned, and I call Jon to let him know what was going on. They told us to go have a leasurely dinner, so we tromped off, half anticipating the flight was going to end up cancelled. We considered going to the sit down TGI Fridays at the other end of the airport, Luckily,
krazykatspotted someone else from our flight coming back from the washroom and told him the announcement. He offered to grab food with us, so we headed to the food court in E terminal. I'd just gotten my burrito when
krazykat ran up and told they've announced boarding for our flight. We booked it back to our gate. As it turned out they hadn't begun boarding, but they did make a boarding announcement about 10 minutes later. Lucky for us; we got to go home earlier. Not so lucky for the people that took them at their word and went further afield for food. The moral of the story? Never trust an airline employee. Ever.