Greetings! Today's post is brought to you live from the inside of Phoenix's own, Sky Harbor International Airport. The time......3:00 a.m.!! "Why," you ask, "are you in the airport at such an hour?" Well, excitement and stupidity. I am here, because I am so excited to get home. I am going home from my Army training in Tuscon, AZ to spend the weekend with my family before coming back here after Veteran's Day. However, my stupid a$$, decided driving from Tucson to Phoenix in the middle of the night (immediately after a training flight) to arrive at the airport at 1:00 a.m. was a splendid idea. So, here I am, spending the night in the airport in Phoenix........yep, just me and the cleaning ladies (whom I don't think speak a lick of English). They are probably thinking to themselves, "Stupido gringo!!" And frankly at this point, I am likely to agree with them.
Oh, I forget, the security dudes are here too. And I didn't really think I looked that suspicious, but they sure do look at me like I am, EVERY time they walk by. I just give them a cheesy grin and wave. Oh, did I mention my eyes are REALLY bloodshot right now, so they probably think I'm some drugged-out loser (with a laptop) with no other place to go. I guess I should just feel lucky they haven't kicked me out on the street yet.
So, what contributing factors led me to think that it was a good idea to arrive at the airport so early?? Well, my flight isn't until 11:20 or so. But I'm hoping to get on stand-by on an earlier flight which leaves at 7:15. So, obviously, I had to be here 2 hours prior to that. And since I got here at 1:00 that would give me 4 hours to catch up on my BLOG, watch the episode of Grey's Anatomy that I missed on Thursday and maybe the episode of Stargate: Atlantis that I missed tonite.
Okay, so we can see that I am accomplishing my first task by evidence of this post. However, my other goals have seem to be a little more elusive. I tried to watch Grey's Anatomy off of ABC's website. However, the free wi-fi connection here at the airport is just a little slow and the streaming of the episode kept skipping and pausing, which just doesn't make for fun TV watching. So, my next plan of attack was to download the episode (and the Stargate episode) off of iTunes, because my wife assured me that iTunes was installed on this computer. Well, when I went to download the episodes......yep, you guessed it......NO iTunes. Grrrrrr. So, I went to download iTunes. Yeah, thanks to the wonderful "high-speed" connection here at the airport that would have taken one and a half hours to complete.....then on top of that the time to download the episodes. Not that I don't have the time to do all that, and who knows, I still might. But, I'm not really excited about sitting here for a couple of hours while TV shows download.
Oh, yeah. So when I first got here, I scoped out the airport. In search of the perfect seat. You know, not too hard, not to soft, close to an outlet, out in the open (just in case a transient decided to molest me). And I found the perfect seat (yippee!!). That is until my computer shut down from running out of battery power, because the outlet DIDN'T WORK!! So I went searching again.......and I found a seat. It's a wonderfully HARD bench, in a corner, next to the janitors closet, where me and Maria have become really good friends. (I just hope she doesn't molest me)
Ouch! The lower half of my body is asleep. (At least, some of me is getting some rest.)
Well, to be perfectly honest. This overnighter is a lot better than the last time I spent the nite in an airport. NO, this isn't my first time. The first time was almost 11 years ago. I was in basic training in the Army and was on my way home for Christmas. And of course, as is usually my luck, my flights got cancelled and/or postponed and/or rerouted. My trip from Ft. Jackson, SC to Idaho Falls, ID had a rather unexpected layover in Denver. My flight got there at about 1:00 a.m. and my flight going to Salt Lake didn't leave until 8:00. So, I got to hang with the cleaning people there in Denver. I was a little overdressed for that sleepover though. I was in my dress uniform (which, at the time, we were required to wear when traveling). I was smart enough to bring with me my CD player, but there is only so much Lynyrd Skynyrd one can take.
So, at least now, I have the internets (and Maria) to keep me company.
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1 comments:
I was in that airport about two weeks ago and also had to find a working outlet for my daughters dvd player, wasn't too bad though, I found one in the terminal across from the one I was actually supposed to be in. It was weird to come home to snow.
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