Flying to Montréal

[dr_kromm]

Austin: Thanks to philreed also having to fly – and within 45 minutes of me, as luck would have it – I had someone to talk with at the airport. This made the wait caused by showing up two hours early (to make the TSA happy) go by in a snap. We talked work talk, sure, but not just that. It sure was nice of him and gina_fischer to put me up at their place and drive me around . . . I was sorry to have to say goodbye!

In the air: A fairly generic flight, but I can't complain: no screaming kids and no coughing plague rats. I started an article for Pyramid #3/5 . . . but had to stop work thanks to the laptop battery. Grr.

Chicago: With all public electrical outlets in use, a dead battery, and a three-hour layover, I decided to search more thoroughly for sushi. No joy on the G, H, K, or L concourses . . . how could a food that's ubiquitous in every major North American city be missing from the second-busiest airport in the U.S.? I settled for a veggie bagel and a blueberry muffin. I eventually scored an outlet when other geeks bugged out, got more writing done, and charged up for the flight.

In the air: The genius move of having our flight leave from the same gate as a flight to Toronto, scheduled just minutes previous, got us off to a late start. (No thanks to three Toronto passengers standing around in plain sight, being paged and ignoring it, thereby delaying their flight and mine.) Luckily, a tailwind corrected the situation. Got a bit more work done on the article, but my seatmate's perfume gave me a headache, so I had to stop squinting at a screen.

Montréal: Cold: -8°C. But Customs was a breeze and now I'm in a cab discussing world politics. Home!

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Comments

[ferrovipathes.livejournal.com]

Welcome back!

[dr-kromm.livejournal.com]

Thanks! It'll be forever before I'm dug out and back at my normal life – nobody takes "please don't e-mail while I'm away" seriously – but I'm back home, a few blocks from you, once again.

[peterdellorto.livejournal.com]

You show up 2 hours early for domestic flights with an international connection? Aww...I'm one of the beneficiaries of that. I tend to go like 90 minutes early. And I still wait an hour and 15 at the gate. :(

[dr-kromm.livejournal.com]

I've yet to need more than 30 minutes to get from the front door of the airport to my gate in any country, ever, no matter the security alerts. Yet they insist on an hour or two in most places. So I've sat at gates for hours lots and lots of times. I wish we had the option to fly "Unsafe Air: Serving the No-Fly List Since September 2001."

[peterdellorto.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and if everyone thought like you...oh wait, we'd probably be fine.

If everyone thought like me, though, 30 minutes before departure the first person would show up to check in. ;)