What a long day yesterday. We left our San Francisco hotel at around noon to make our way to the airport. We told our taxi driver that we were going to the airport. "San Francisco airport?" the driver asked. All of us looked at each other and kind of told ourselves, "Duh!"
Our driver then told us that Oakland airport was about the same distance from our hotel and one time he took a passenger all the way to SF airport only to find out that the person was flying out of Oakland airport. Interesting.
All of us thought that it would be a heavy travel day and there would be long lines at the airport. But, we checked in without incident and went through the security line with no problem.
Our first snag occurred when we were told that our departure from SF would be delayed for an hour. Unlike when we had a straight flight to SF, we had a connecting flight going home. So, we began to worry about missing our connecting flight in Chicago, and maybe losing our luggage.
Four hours later, we landed in Chicago. The flight attendant told the plane to allow those with connecting flights off the plane first. Of course, no one listened. So, we had to negotiate from our 50th row seat to other passengers that we had to rush to our connecting flight. Most people were reasonable, but there's always that one person whose life is always more important than yours.
Luckily, the airport has an outside shuttle bus which takes people from the "c" concourse to the "e" concourse, where our gate was. There would be no way that we could walk that entire way in the five minutes we had to change planes. But, we made it home, with all of our luggage, ok.
It was past midnight when we landed at home airport. Someone said, "It's really 11pm anyway with that time change thing." Oh yeah, I forgot that daylight savings time ends and we had to turn our clocks back.
What an interesting concept. Some bureaucrat determines what time it is and has the power to "time travel." In doing a quick search, I found an interesting article describing the history of daylight savings time. And, Congress passed a law last year that will extend daylight savings time in 2007. (NPR)
These last 10 days have been very relaxing. Not looking forward to going back to work tomorrow, but I know I have to. Thanks for the great feedback on my blogcasts. They were fun! Don't know when my next one will be. A different change of pace from the written blog.