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Jul. 12th, 2008 03:30 pmIn the Philadelphia airport right now. LOL at how I've not been posting all the stuff before this that I've been meaning to write up, so nobody has any idea why I'm in PA. Went to Corning NY for the reunion, then up to Rutland(ish) VT for the aunt's house staying (where she'd lost the password for the wireless internets, so virtually no access for me at all there--add that to the no air conditioning and me having to sleep on the couch, which would be fine if the aunt hadn't been getting up ungodly early every day, thus waking me up at same ungodly hour, and scenery or not, I'm happy to be out of there), and this morning we drove down to Albany for me to catch a flight here (Philadelphia) to get a connector back to St. Louis. At 6:30, gah. I tried to get them to switch me up to the 4:45 one here, but since I had a checked bag, I couldn't. I was like "I could run back and get the bag like everybody else and recheck it on the new plane!" but no, because they would have been done unloading by then.
Got here rather surprisingly early--I assumed that planes left when they were scheduled to leave or later, not earlier, but we were up in the air a good 12 minutes pre-scheduled departure and touched down right at 2:50 (Eastern time--I finally got all my watches and computers and such switched perhaps day before yesterday only to have to switch it all back when I get home). So I have to hang out for the next 3 hours or so, but I found a spot with a power plug (not my terminal, but who's really going to check that?) and the airport has free wireless, so I'm content. Not so content in that flight sickness has not quite subsided, however. I should have figured that I'd be sickly, but I didn't realize how much dipping and bobbing and majorslantage (that seriously OMGfreaked me out the first time--when I thought about it, I immediately knew that the plane had to do that to turn, but it didn't stop the pre-thought OJEZUSWE'REGOINGDOWN shudder). I took a bunch of pictures out the window and such, but I don't think I have the cord or I'd stick them on right now. Perhaps, we will check when I finish typing.
First flight plane was seriously the smallest ever. See pictures to eventually (hopefully) be attached. Nine rows of seats, pairs on each side of the aisle with the last (9th) being a bench at the back of five seats. No bathroom either, which is funny, because we (mum, Kaci, and aunt Anna who all rode the hour and a half or so down to Albany with me) were listening to NPR on the way over, and they had their "We give you three news stories and you tell us which one's real" bit and it was about airplanes/airlines, and one of the two fakes (that we all thought was the real one) was about one airline possibly taking out bathrooms from their planes on flights less than 2 hours. Looks like it's already happened--THIS MEANS I WAS RIGHT, ANNA. I was supposed to be in seat 8D, but there was only one lady for the whole back bench, so I asked her if she'd mind me sneaking back there with her. She did not, and thus I was able to get a couple of out-of-window shots too without squishing the woman I was supposed to be sitting next to. And got essentially 2.5 seats to myself, as it was window-emptyseat-her-empty-me-empty-window. I really hope that some sort of the same situation will be possible on flight 2, as that's the one where I'll be in the air around sunset time, which is really when I want to be able to get the out-of-window pictures.
Wicked good timing with the flights, though. We bought the ticket on the 7th, and if we had waited until the 9th, I would have had to cough up $15 to check a single bag. And since it's before methinks August 1st, I still got a free Diet Coke on the plane.
Gah, stomach, stop being queasylike. You're on the freaking ground, what the hell?
Cool things about this airport. The food. They've got an A Bon Pain, which I'd been wanting to try out because of their whole menu of < 200 calorie foods. They have a smoothie place with < 100 calorie smoothies, too, which is win. I might end up trying both at some point, as no lunch was had (due to driving to and then being on a plane), though admittedly the breakfast happened around 10am, and thus the hunger has not returned (killed by the airsickness?). And it's all guaranteed to be street price, which means it's not going to kill my wallet (or, you know, will anyway because Philly's street price can't be cheap, but at least it's not going to be hugely more).
So sadness about the not getting on the 4:45 flight back to STL, but I have stuff to do, so it's cool. And I'm still getting home significantly sooner than the 13 hours of driving that it would have taken were mum ready to go home (I've got to work on Monday doing this teaching assistant gig for a summer camp for gifted 1st and 2nd graders, she loves Vermont too much to leave after only 5 days) or the 25+ hours of Greyhound bussing or train that was the second choice (Anna found the flight, thank god, and it was only like $20 more than the by-then sold out train and actually less than the bus). Though AIR CONDITIONING, PHILLY, WOULD BE NICE. It's probably just warm because I'm in the terminal area, where they've got the connectors to the outside and all, but it's 88 degrees in the outdoors and not a whole lot cooler in here.
O LAPTOP PLZ STOP THAT. It just had a popup thing telling me that Windows Media Player found somebody else's (the lady sharing this outlet with me, permaybehaps?) computer and can share files with her. NO THANKS, LAPTOPPY SIR. This unsecured network thing does not happy make me, especially since my Norton Anti-Virus trial that came with the computer ran out a few days ago. Scary.
Got here rather surprisingly early--I assumed that planes left when they were scheduled to leave or later, not earlier, but we were up in the air a good 12 minutes pre-scheduled departure and touched down right at 2:50 (Eastern time--I finally got all my watches and computers and such switched perhaps day before yesterday only to have to switch it all back when I get home). So I have to hang out for the next 3 hours or so, but I found a spot with a power plug (not my terminal, but who's really going to check that?) and the airport has free wireless, so I'm content. Not so content in that flight sickness has not quite subsided, however. I should have figured that I'd be sickly, but I didn't realize how much dipping and bobbing and majorslantage (that seriously OMGfreaked me out the first time--when I thought about it, I immediately knew that the plane had to do that to turn, but it didn't stop the pre-thought OJEZUSWE'REGOINGDOWN shudder). I took a bunch of pictures out the window and such, but I don't think I have the cord or I'd stick them on right now. Perhaps, we will check when I finish typing.
First flight plane was seriously the smallest ever. See pictures to eventually (hopefully) be attached. Nine rows of seats, pairs on each side of the aisle with the last (9th) being a bench at the back of five seats. No bathroom either, which is funny, because we (mum, Kaci, and aunt Anna who all rode the hour and a half or so down to Albany with me) were listening to NPR on the way over, and they had their "We give you three news stories and you tell us which one's real" bit and it was about airplanes/airlines, and one of the two fakes (that we all thought was the real one) was about one airline possibly taking out bathrooms from their planes on flights less than 2 hours. Looks like it's already happened--THIS MEANS I WAS RIGHT, ANNA. I was supposed to be in seat 8D, but there was only one lady for the whole back bench, so I asked her if she'd mind me sneaking back there with her. She did not, and thus I was able to get a couple of out-of-window shots too without squishing the woman I was supposed to be sitting next to. And got essentially 2.5 seats to myself, as it was window-emptyseat-her-empty-me-empty-window. I really hope that some sort of the same situation will be possible on flight 2, as that's the one where I'll be in the air around sunset time, which is really when I want to be able to get the out-of-window pictures.
Wicked good timing with the flights, though. We bought the ticket on the 7th, and if we had waited until the 9th, I would have had to cough up $15 to check a single bag. And since it's before methinks August 1st, I still got a free Diet Coke on the plane.
Gah, stomach, stop being queasylike. You're on the freaking ground, what the hell?
Cool things about this airport. The food. They've got an A Bon Pain, which I'd been wanting to try out because of their whole menu of < 200 calorie foods. They have a smoothie place with < 100 calorie smoothies, too, which is win. I might end up trying both at some point, as no lunch was had (due to driving to and then being on a plane), though admittedly the breakfast happened around 10am, and thus the hunger has not returned (killed by the airsickness?). And it's all guaranteed to be street price, which means it's not going to kill my wallet (or, you know, will anyway because Philly's street price can't be cheap, but at least it's not going to be hugely more).
So sadness about the not getting on the 4:45 flight back to STL, but I have stuff to do, so it's cool. And I'm still getting home significantly sooner than the 13 hours of driving that it would have taken were mum ready to go home (I've got to work on Monday doing this teaching assistant gig for a summer camp for gifted 1st and 2nd graders, she loves Vermont too much to leave after only 5 days) or the 25+ hours of Greyhound bussing or train that was the second choice (Anna found the flight, thank god, and it was only like $20 more than the by-then sold out train and actually less than the bus). Though AIR CONDITIONING, PHILLY, WOULD BE NICE. It's probably just warm because I'm in the terminal area, where they've got the connectors to the outside and all, but it's 88 degrees in the outdoors and not a whole lot cooler in here.
O LAPTOP PLZ STOP THAT. It just had a popup thing telling me that Windows Media Player found somebody else's (the lady sharing this outlet with me, permaybehaps?) computer and can share files with her. NO THANKS, LAPTOPPY SIR. This unsecured network thing does not happy make me, especially since my Norton Anti-Virus trial that came with the computer ran out a few days ago. Scary.
