Washington DC - traveling by air

Actually, I'm not in DC, but in Alexandria, VA. I have a business meeting here this weekend, so I figured I'd see if the hotel internet is good. The answer to that would be "Yes". Unfortunately, it's unlikely that I'll get to see much of Alexandria since this is in fact a business trip. I suspect I'll be hotel-bound most of the weekend.


Yesterday I was a little worried about this trip because we were scheduled to have thunderstorms roll in last night. I was thinking in terms of delayed flights, etc. But once again my luck held .... or my guardian deities were on the job, which amounts to the same thing. It was just starting to rain as we were taking off this morning. Smooth flight, no problems. Just like I like them.


Washington Reagan was as crowded as ever. Seems like that airport is always crowded, or anyway it is every time I come through it. I was a little surprised today. I didn't think noon on a Friday would be so busy. And there seemed to be a lot of ground traffic also. Once when I flew out of Washington Reagan, both my flight and another flight to a completely different location were actually posted on the board as leaving from the same gate at the same time. You can probably imagine the congestion at that gate. It was a day of bad weather, flight delays and frustration.

Actually I try not to get frustrated with air travel delays. The nature of the travel beast is that things come up. It's very definitely a roll-with-the-punches type of experience. Flight delayed? Diverted? Grounded? Canceled? Okay. Find an alternative. On top of that, I'm pretty much an anal-retentive traveler. I always arrive at the airport 2 hours before my flight. I always sit where I can watch the gate and the screen behind the gate counter. That's from experience. I've had several times when they switched gates on me, and for whatever reason (noise level in the waiting area usually) I didn't hear the one announcement they made. Once at DFW, I flew into terminal A and had a connection to make at terminal D. By the time I got to terminal D, they had switched the gates .... you guessed it. My connection was now leaving from terminal A! Luckily DFW now has the SkyLink train which is extremely functional and pretty fast because those terminals are not close. At any rate, I've learned to keep one eye on the screen right up until I'm walking onto the plane.

I've had some really unique experiences while traveling, and of course airports are ideal for people-watching. It's an amazing thing sometimes. Today there was a little woman on my plane who's hair was bright fuchsia. Really bright fuchsia. It's interesting to look for the ones that really stand out like that, but I like to look at the average people and make guesses or draw conclusions. Like: men are more likely to be traveling alone than women. Or: women with children tend NOT to be traveling with a man. Or: 8 out of 10 people passing by are SERIOUSLY overweight .... which says bad things, either about our society or about the traveling public. Or: Most people who are running through airports are in heels. Or: people don't bother looking even fairly nice when they're traveling. It used to be that when I traveled, most people were in business suits, or nice clothes. Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes. A few people would be "scruffy" looking. Now "scruffy" is more the rule, not the exception. Does that mean a lowering of standards of what's acceptable for wearing out in public? Does it mean that more "average" people are now traveling by air? I don't know, but people watching in airports lets me have all sorts of interesting thoughts.

And of course, it gives me lots of time to catch up on my reading. I've just recently started carrying my laptop with me when I travel, so I used to exclusively read. This trip in particular would have been hard without the laptop since I had more than 100 pages worth of agenda and documentation that I needed to bring.

Oops, gotta go start the weekend meeting marathon.