The Amazing Trip Home--"If a Stranger Approaches You About Carrying a Foreign Object..."

A domestic Wisconsin cheese, I take it, is ok to carry for a stranger. :)

So here I am in Detroit Metro airport, spending $6.95 to access the wireless network (grr...that should be a service at this point), in a very lousy terminal because my connection has been delayed. Better than missing it I suppose. It's not clear if the crew has not made it from someplace else, or there are weather issues in Traverse City (a native heading home tells me they land there in just about anything), but while giving detailed updates on all sorts of other flights (South Bend's plane isn't here, Evansville's needed maintenance, Cincinnati passengers are being put on a bus if they want tonight), we got nothing until 20 minutes after the scheduled departure time. And little detail at that.

C concourse at Detroit Metro is a hallway, essentially, for gates 9-39. No seating. There's a large lounge out by gates 1-8 where we're supposed to wait until 30 min. before departure, and where they do make all the relevant announcements. But it's really poor design. (So is their wireless signup--it keeps telling me the username is in use, while I paid for 3 accounts. At least it's a known bug and a phone call to customer service got me straightened out, appropriately uncharged, in two minutes.)

I got up at 5, the shuttle came at 5:40 (ten minutes early), and I got to Dulles by 6:45 and out to the gate by 7:15. For a 9:20 flight. Yeah, next time, I drive myself or remember that the departure time means I need to be moving a lot earlier than that--and book a noon flight. Zzzzzzzzz.

I will update this post as necessary. I'll going to put it up now and maybe linkify it a little before I leave, but I want to surf around a little, since I'm paying for it.

The Pit Stop--Manistee, MI

Shortly after the initial blog post, the board out in the lounge said we were boarding...but no, as it turned out, that must have been an automatic reaction to the posted (new) departure time. We didn't actually leave until 3:45, for a nice little hour-long jaunt in a Saab 340 Turboprop. 33 Seats, and 8 empty despite the fact that they got 4 or 5 volunteers to change their plans. So weird. And yes, the delay was the crew had not made it in from Wisconsin. Probably debating theology with Bartleby and Loki.

Oddly enough, my cousin Mark was on the plane, connecting through from Raleigh. Had I only known, I could have bummed a ride to Manistee in his rental car.

When we got there...we got out on the tarmac. I haven't done that in a long time. Ah, out-of-the-way airports. What a joy.

In Traverse City, I was worried because there were fifty people who were waiting for the luggage when we got there. But something must have been really wrong with theirs, because ours came out first.

Drive home took us a while because it was snowing. Including the stop for dinner we got in about 8:15. Which means it was about 14 1/2 hours from door to door. I could almost drive that (Mapquest says 12:37 of actually driving time), although it would be far more exhausting. And, of course, it shouldn't have taken that long, but welcome to high-volume air traffic in the midwest winter. C'est la vie.

Thus endeth the travelogue. Merry Christmas, all y'all.