Tag: airplane

Leaving on a jet plane

Actually, I’m flying on a jet plane. I’m bored while on my delayed flight back to Columbus, so I decided to get on my laptop for awhile. Who knows when I’ll remember to actually upload this to LJ, if ever. If you see this, I guess I did eventually upload it.

It’s 10:42pm – 37 minutes after I was supposed to land. We actually took off when we were supposed to land. It’s a dark & stormy night, apparently. (Hmmm, should have used that as my title for this entry, I guess.) I’m glad they do the delays – I’d rather get home in one piece rather than scattered about in little bits.

Oooh – my ginger ale is almost here. Woot! Ginger Ale is always what I get on planes. Not sure why – guess cuz the burping helps me keep my ears unplugged.

elsaf, judiang and I got on the road this morning at 10am. There were lots of hugs & thank yous, and then we were off. We figured we had a 6 hour drive ahead of us provided we could prevent Garmin from sending us through the Holland Tunnel again. Sure, he wimpered every time we used hergrace‘s directions rather than the ones he wanted us to follow. But eventually he caught onto the route we wanted to go. Sort of.

We stopped at a McDonald’s in Massachusetts Connecticut for lunch and to switch drivers. Once again, I was going to attempt the Connecticut-New York-New Jersey leg – this time hoping to avoid New York City. The goal was to take the Tappan Zee bridge. And despite Garmin’s protests, we successfully did. Woot!

In New Jersey, we once again swapped drivers (and Judi and I got milkshakes from Burger King) Elsa drove us the rest of the way to the Philly Airport. (Mmmm, honey roasted peanuts have just been passed out. And yes, on the package it states “Produced in facility that processes peanuts and other nuts.” Well duh!)

Garmin predicted us arriving before 5:30 and we certainly did. We dropped Judi off first and then Elsa and I took the car back. We tucked Garmin back in his little bag and then took the transport to the terminal. Alas, none of us were in the same gate – indeed, my gate was completely cut off from the others. Still, we texted each other for awhile before the flights took off. I’m pretty certain Judi took off nearly on time. Elsa said she was delayed. And I was definitely delayed.

My main goal when I land will be to drive safely home. It’ll be around 1:30am when I arrive home. And I’ll be very glad to see my kitties!

Descent time.

Ah – forgot about free wireless at the Columbus airport. Will post this now while I wait for my luggage.

Thanks girls for a WONDERFUL time! See y’all when I can!

ETA: changed Massachusetts to Connecticut – for some reason I always forget that state!

Italy Trip: Getting There

Jul 19, 2005

11:00am I’m sitting at the S’barro seating area at the Dayton International Airport. I’ve got a peach smoothiethat I’m sipping on ($3.80 from Boston Stoker). It’s very tasty. The object of today’s flying? Get to Rome!

[Present day Trina cutting in here. This is the first entry in my paper journal that I kept during the trip. I’m making corrections as I go, but so far, am terribly faithful to it. You can tell by the sheer tedium I’m writing about. I’ll start cutting out the tedious comments as I go as well, or you’ll all be sleeping on your keyboards.]

Unfortunately my last journal was left in a Big Boy in Michigan back in April, so I’ve no idea what I last wrote about in my print journal. My electronic journal is a bit more up to date. [That’s what she thinks!] I decided against bringing my laptop on this trip because of the carrying issue, electrical issue, and lack of ‘net issue. I’ve got lots of electronics with me, however. So boredom won’t ever be an issue. [It wasn’t]

So, what’s up with this trip? Well, back in October ’03 our BW3’s group first talked about renting a villa in Tuscany. We’ve done a lot of plotting and planning since then and 18 of us are going to Roma for 3 days and the villa for 7 days.

I’m the only one taking US Air to Rome – most of the rest are taking Northwest. Even judiang (who is my roomie) is taking the Detroit->Rome leg of it. I’ll be on the same flight as everyone for the way back, however.

[The next several paragraphs are a summary of what we intended to do on the trip. Since I’ll be reporting on what we actually did, it seems a bit silly to include that here too, so I skipped ’em.]

2:20pm Now sitting near my gate (I think) at Philly’s airport. The place is practically deserted at the moment since most international flights leave at night. Mine’s at 6:10pm, so I’ve got a bit of a layover.

5:10pm Still at gate and so is our plane (has been for some time). Judi, meanwhile, got her times confused and left for the airport late. I’m hoping the lack of contact since her call means she’s in the air now to Detroit. Please let it be so!

5:53pm Good news! Judi’s luggage made the flight! Bad news – Judi’s body did not! Crap! So, she’s going to try and get on standby to Amsterdam and then from there on to Italy. If things work out, she can be in Rome by 3pm. Wow! Poor Judi! I’m hoping she can get there OK.

In the Good News camp again, we’re on the Airbus A330 rather than the Boeing 767. That means we get the ability to pick our own inflight entertainment! Sweet. There’s even a remote control! And the adapter for my headphones fits the jacks. Still dunno how well they work. [Got Magnavox noise cancellation headphones for the plane – only $35 at Walmart.]

Movie choices include Hitch and Robots, so I think I’ll pick them. Who knows what Northwest will offer for the ride back.

Oh, interesting sign of the times: The old No Smoking lighted signs have been replaced with “Please turn off electronic devices” signs.

Captain’s just welcomed us. We should be pushing off shortly.

6:25pm Departing a little late – a connecting flight arrived late, but we’re all here now! And we’re off to Rome!

7:00pm Ha! Spoke too soon. Yup, we’re still on the ground, trying to get to the front of the queue.

Now, although this journal entry hasn’t actually talked about the arrival to Rome, I’m going to include a couple of photos from Rome. There will be more in the next post when I write about the arrival.

Judi and Trina in Vatican City.
Judi and Trina in Vatican City. If you look closely, elsaf, you’ll see the Pope in the background, left. He’s spying on us, but we just ignored him.

The Heffalump Monument.
I liked this particular monument. I like heffalumps. And woozles. No woozles on this one, however. And what’s with all the Egyptian needles? The Romans were obsessed, I think.

In other news, work was a bitch today (and yesterday), but my new video card (for my new computer) arrived today and installed nicely. I can now play City of Heroes on my new PC. Also, Semagic is able to detect music from QCD – woot! Oh, and while listening to Information Society, I discovered they did a cover of Abba’s “Lay All Your Love on Me.” Heh, never noticed before.