The Longer Post

Here is it my longer post. It's nice to finally have a week where I'm not traveling! In the past three weeks I've been to Florida twice and NYC once. A little over a month ago I was lamenting my recent lack of work travel, and then boom. When it rains, it pours. Literally.

I really like traveling for work because I get to see places I'd normally never go and meet people I'd not get a chance to meet otherwise. And also I get to test rental cars, which is nice because it helps me figure out what car I might like to buy at some point. This last week in Florida I got a Chevy Cavalier, and it was a total piece of crap. That wasn't entirely the Cavalier's fault, though. The brakes were pretty bad, causing that lovely "car shaking until the wheels fall off" feeling every time I slowed down. Also, it was just really uncomfortable to drive. The controls were not well-placed. I think the only real positive I got from it was that its seats were extremely comfortable.

And if you've been keeping track of my rental car vs. speed bumps record, the Cavalier can take a speed bump at 20mph. Not too bad, it measures up to my previous rental car vs. speed bumps tests, such as the Toyota Echo, the Dodge Neon, the Suzuki Aerio, and the Ford Focus.

One bad point of my trip was the flight home to Baltimore. I was supposed to leave Tallahassee at 7:40pm and, via Atlanta, get into BWI Airport at midnite. But that of course would be too easy.

I had already spent much of Wednesday driving to and from across the panhandle for some stories, about six total hours, in fact. I got to the airport very early, and then sat there as bad weather in Atlanta closed down that airport. We didn't board the airplane in Tallahassee until 8:20 or so, but as soon as we backed up from the gate the pilot came on to say that Atlanta had shut down again until 9:30pm. So we sat in the plane for an hour.

Then at 9:30pm, the pilot comes back to say that the airport would be closed until 10pm. This was bad, as my connecting flight out of Atlanta was supposed to leave at 10:15pm. My only shred of hope appeared when the flight attendant told us that the entire Atlanta airport was closed, meaning our connecting flights would be delayed as well.

At 10pm, we finally were allowed to leave. I'm not normally claustrophobic, but at that point I was completely stir crazy after being stuck on a non-moving airplane for more than an hour. Worse than that was that I had finished the book I brought along, so I had nothing to read. Also, because I'd traveled on the same airline two weeks before to Florida, I'd also already read the stupid in-flight magazine. And SkyMall is only as exciting as one can make it, so it doesn't last for more than 15 minutes of enjoyment either.

We finally arrived in Atlanta at 11:10pm. I scooted off the plane and up to the Delta agent to see if I would be stuck in Hot-lanta for the evening. He said my 10:15pm flight was already gone but that I could make the 11:15pm flight. I looked at my watch. It was now 11:14pm. To make things more fun, that flight was scheduled to leave from a gate that was 20 miles away.

Excellent, I thought as I grabbed my bag and started to run, There's no way in hell I'm going to make this.

As I ran to the gate, I passed the Delta customer service counter line, which was chock full of angry passengers now stranded in the airport for the evening. Employees were handing out blankets. I hoped that I wouldn't have to join the huddled masses on the floor of the airport.

After crossing the Sahara and the Serengeti all in one airport marathon run, I made it to my gate. Imagine my excitement when I saw that flight was delayed until 12:10. No really, I was excited because I would not get stuck in the airport for the evening.

So, when all was said and done, I got into Baltimore at 2:30am Thursday morning. That's not bad when you think of it as only being 2.5 hours beyond when I was originally supposed to get in. But when you add to that my six hours of driving time before it and then just the annoyance of being stuck in an airport for hours - it felt much worse.

I felt like a zombie on that final plane into Baltimore. Nothing was making sense anymore. I was going in and out of sleep. The cabin was very dimly lit. At one point I woke up to find a stewardess staring at me.

"Do you want some chips?" she asked. I wasn't sure I could answer in English anymore. I thought I might croak out, "Brrraaiinnnnnnsss....BRAINS!" in response. But somehow I managed to nod and receive a small bag of sunchips.

And so I had dinner of Sun Chips at 2am Thursday morning. My stomach responded by making noises I've never heard it make, which I suppose is par for the course when the only thing it gets to eat in eight hours is a bag of chips at 2am.

I'm sure our departure from the aircraft in Baltimore looked surreal. A plane-load of zombies crawling off with their bags and Delta blankets.

Miraculously enough, even my luggage had made the entire trip without making an unscheduled sidetrip. My zombie hands grabbed the bag and then hailed a cab home.

More later. I'll post my photos of Ft. Me, which was built on the beach my feet are enjoying in the photo below.