Hurry up and wait...

Yesterday, I spent most of the day traveling across country, as I left for a two day business trip on the east coast. I consider myself a seasoned traveler as I have grown up flying and have many great memories from my youth of time spent with my family visiting countries in the Far East and Europe. Even now, while I'm not a "regular" business traveler, I do make several trips a year for business and recreation purposes. I can remember when flying used to be fun. Spreading out in big seats on the plane and getting treated by the stewardesses (they were not called flight attendants back then) to drinks and food. And when I say food, I mean a meal, like dinner. Chicken and rice with vegetables, or something else that would equal something you might get at a decent diner. Yesterday, after navigating the lines at the self-serve check-in desk to get my boarding pass and pay $15 to check my bag, I went through the security area before heading to my gate. Here is where you have to take off your shoes and coat, remove the laptop from your carry on bag, and place any valuables and metal items in a tray so it can be run through a scanner. The airlines tell you to show up at the airport 1 and a half to 2 hours before your flight, so you can have time to do all this and not risk missing your plane. The trouble is with weather delays and the airlines deciding to condense flights to maximum capacity to squeeze every possible dime from well paying ticket holders, you inevitably end up waiting...and waiting for the flight to arrive, deplane, and board. My flight out was a half hour late leaving which meant that I would have only 30 minutes to make my connecting flight in Atlanta. Once I arrived in Atlanta and deplaned, I found out that my next flight was now leaving 2 hours later than planned! Well, I guess I wasn't going to miss that flight. I decided to pass the time by grabbing a bite to eat since I had missed lunch and was thrown a small bag of peanuts on the previous flight. I had a turkey sandwich which although was good, was not $9 good (I'm not sure what's more expensive, airport food or ballpark food). I watched a little TV with the sound turned off (I really don't like reading captions) and checked my messages and e-mail. My next flight was shorter in length, and lucky for me, since I was sitting next to a 300 pound man and felt like I was being squished into the side of the plane. I finally made it to my destination, got my luggage and rental car and drove to my hotel. It was one that I had been to before. Check in went smooth, they had my reservation. The only problem was, when I went to my room, and opened the door, I discovered that the room was already occupied, by a man lounging in bed! I bolted back to the front desk to explain the problem to the clerk, who said, "I wonder how that happened?" That's what I wanted to know! She quickly gave me a new key to a different room where I changed shirts and decided to head out to a walk. What a day. I need a drink!