Joys of travel

So I know a lot of you think my life is so great because I do all this travel for work. Well, let me tell you, it's not all roses. Case in point - Thursday night. I know a lot of you experienced the joys of getting stranded places, etc when you went to Maine for the wedding. I complain about how difficult it is to get in and out of Maine. I have always said that DFW is the absolute best airport in the US. It's extremely easy to get in and out of. You can pretty much fly to anywhere in the US, every hour, non-stop and it's only a 2-3 hour flight.

The bad thing about this convenience is that when there's a storm it causes so much back-up at the airport because of the volume. This was the case Thursday night as I left Detroit. Before I even left the office I knew the flight was going to be delayed. Not only did I know from the flight status notification I received in my email but American also called me up to let me know it was delayed. I guess that's the benefit of having status. I decided to head to the airport anyway.

While there I found out that they pushed the time back another hour. I proceeded to find a spot to sit down that was near an outlet and took my computer out. I decided it was time to catch up on some of the shows I missed over the weekend that were stored on my DVR (good thing about being married to a computer nerd - have all sorts of gadgets). I knew there was work I should be doing but it had been a stressful week so I relaxed. I played some games on my phone, talked to Sean and did some people watching. I finally got annoyed with the speed of my wireless card and the sling catcher so I just turned it off and patiently waited for the plane to arrive.

I finally got on the plane. I have no idea what time it was - what's the point of looking when there's nothing you can do about it. Just about the entire plane was either Platinum or above (AA status) or part of a college swim team heading to UT for a meet. They missed their connection by the way and ended up chartering a bus and drove the additional 4-5 hours to Austin that night.

I finally landed in Dallas around midnight. The car was parked at a different terminal and I had a checked bag. So I hopped the Sky Link, picked up the car and then drove over to get my bag. Then I was headed on the drive home.

On the drive home I noticed some lights in my rear view mirror that looked like a police processional. It wasn't - it was about a dozen motorcycles, with people on the back, flying past me like I was standing still - and I was going 85.

New things I noticed since I was nearly the only person on the road - they raised the speed limit to 70 on one of the highways. They also raised the tolls. They must have figured out the new amounts based on the amount of miles (or fractions) there are between each of them. How else would you get a toll to be 47 cents, 26 cents or 1.08? The other thing they did is remove the booths to pay the tolls with cash. Now if you don't have a toll tag they mail you a bill. Interesting!

With all that said, I finally got home at 1 am, logged into my computer to replicate all the emails and work I did on the plane and finally headed to bed at 2:00. Since the next day was Friday there was no sleeping in and man was I tired while I had to sit on all those conference calls!!!