...that was one of the sections in an O'Hare bookstore.

O'Hare airport is where I spent most of my day really. My flight from Cleveland was an hour and a half late to arrive so I missed my flight to Minneapolis. It was foggy in Chicago - REALLY foggy, 1/4 mile visibility, so I guess I'm lucky I got in at all, a lot of flights were canceled outright. I got onto a later flight though, scheduled for 6:05 pm but it did finally get out at about 9:45 PM Central time.

I had forgotten about this, but United Airlines has a "channel 9" feature where you can listen in on the cockpit radio chatter at your seat. It's really cool - especially on days like today where there's a lot of craziness.

Also, United frequently uses advertising slogans that are apparently too intelligent for me to even get - it took me years to get the "United begins with you" slogan and I think I only today actually understood "Ted is a part of United"

My seat on the flight to Minneapolis was what United is marketing as "Economy Plus," which I think is funny because every other airline seems to have those as well, only they call them "exit rows."

On the plus side, all of my gear got to Minneapolis before me, so it was all waiting for me when I got to baggage claim.

There's a good amount of snow on the ground here, and the current temp (28) was described as "remarkably mild" on the radio station I was listening to. I guess it won't be quite so mild tomorrow though.

current weather: Cloudy, 28, Wind: NE 1; It looks like there's new snow on the ground here

Tags: air travel, minnesota, travel, work
Current Location: 44.927N 92.970W
Current Mood: exhausted
Current Music: none

Apparently Pensacola's in the Central Time Zone. That explains my confusion regarding the time since I got here. Pensacola also has some hills, something else I wasn't expecting.

My flights went ok today. No delays or anything, and I managed to read an entire book so that's not a bad thing. On the downside my carry-on (with laptop inside) got dropped onto the asphalt from about 5 feet by an airline employee (who, to their credit, apologized, and obviously my laptop seems to be fine since I'm writing this), and I sat next to someone who (I'm being serious) probably needed two seats.

So far so good. Tomorrow I'll survey the first site, and hopefully get to see Kirsten in the evening. I gave her a phone call, hopefully I'll hear back.

current weather: Partly Cloudy, 54, Wind: SW 5; There was a bright red sunset here tonight - very pretty

Tags: air travel, florida, pensacola, surveying, work
Current Location: 30.519N 87.315W
Current Mood: tired
Current Music: none

My story from Friday regarding my flight home and oversleeping has an interesting epilogue.

When I got to the airport to catch my noon flight, I quickly discovered from talking to some people that apparently the 6:45 am flight had been canceled anyway. Everyone that was originally scheduled to be on the 6:45 flight was now on the noon flight with me. This one couple I was talking to had gotten up at 2 am to catch that flight, so they had been in the airport for about 8 hours when the plane finally left.

So ultimately it's not so bad that I overslept, because if I had, I would have ended up being stuck at the airport all morning. And believe me, being stuck in the airport in Bangor is a lot different than being stuck in the airport in Denver or Chicago. In fact, once you go through security, you don't even have access to restrooms anymore. As you can imagine everyone delayed going through security for as long as possible.

Tags: air travel
Current Location: 41.197N 81.433W
Current Mood: calm
Current Music: none

So after all the drama last night thinking I had overslept and missed my flight?

Apparently it was an omen, I just woke up 19 minutes ago. My flight will leave without me in 7 minutes. Nice job Dave.

Believe it or not this is actually the first time I've missed a flight though, I'm embarrassed.

I rescheduled, instead of flying out this morning I'm going to leave Bangor at noon and arrive in Cleveland at 5:25 (Mom and Dad: US Airways flight 3231 to Philadelphia, flight 3351 to Cleveland).

**** UPDATE: in a further twist of irony, it would appear the reason I didn't wake up is that my alarm was set to 4:00 PM, not 4:00 AM.

current weather: Mostly Clear, 51, Wind: calm

Tags: air travel, travel, work
Current Location: 44.839N 68.743W
Current Mood: embarrassed
Current Music: none

Hey, the internet works!

I started reading "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini this afternoon based on Dad's suggestion. By the time I landed here in Bangor I was only 30 pages from the end, so I think I may finish it up before I go to bed. It's very good.

In all of the times I've flown out of Akron/Canton or Cleveland in my life, I can't recall a single time that I actually flew over my home. Today the weather was exceptionally clear - so clear that I could see downtown Akron when we took off from Cleveland - I've never seen that far in the daytime from Cleveland before. Then, we flew over Gregg's apartment, which I thought was super cool, next thing I know we're over the Blanches' house in Brecksville, then over Peninsula, and lo and behold, we flew right over my apartment and work. I was thrilled.

Air travel is real hairy in the afternoons and evenings these days. I can only imagine what happens when the weather gets bad. We sat on the runway in Cleveland for 50 minutes before we left for Philadelphia, because of traffic in Philly, and then when we pulled away from the gate in Philadelphia we waited again for nearly an hour to take off. That said, the flight to Bangor from Philadelphia was the first flight I've been on in over a year that wasn't completely full or overbooked.

We also flew right over New York City, which looked really exceptional in the particularly clear night tonight. Everybody was moving to the right side of the plane to look - it was beautiful.

So anyway I'm in Bangor now, and I'm happy because the internet works.

Unfortunately I've noticed one big slip up on my part - it looks like I forgot my cell phone charger. I'm not really sure what to do about this, does anyone have any suggestions? The closest Verizon store is in Augusta - which is 89 miles away. There's a KMart nearby and I'm sure there's a Wal-Mart in town somewhere - think I might be able to find something there? I have it turned off at the moment, but I'll need to use it in the morning in order to figure out how to meet up with the other surveyor.

current weather: Clear, 47, Wind: calm; There's a frost warning here tonight

Tags: air travel, bangor, books, maine, mistakes, travel, work
Current Location: 44.839N 68.743W
Current Mood: tired
Current Music: none