Flying

UPDATE: Landed, trying to find my shuttle...

I’ve always enjoyed flying, from being really young and flying with my grandfather in hi 4-seat Piper, to flying with Alan in the Diamond, to the various trips at 30,000+. The logistics, the environment, the adventure has always fascinated me.

I told myself when I was young that I would get my pilot’s license, and I still hold that hope. It’s gotten pushed aside for other things like school and the Harley (I don’t have to rent the Harley for $100/hour), but I still have the flight bag, maps, and the headset I got for christmas one year. I don’t know if i’ve used the headset yet; I received it around the time Mom and Alan bought the boat, and fun on the water beat out fun in the air.

So for someone so in love with flying, you think I would have the logistics of getting to my gate with as few hassles as possible. My checked bag was slightly overweight (by 5 pounds), so to avoid the $50 fee for the overweight bag, I had to pull out some things to go into my slightly-stuffed carry-on. Security was much easier, thanks to the new Timbuk2 bag with the separate laptop compartment. I crammed my phone, wallet, keys into my bag, and dropped my shoes (I still have to take these off?) and my belt into a bin. A TSA agent put her purse on the belt before my stuff, and as I went through the detector to grab my bag, the X-ray agent goes “Woah...heh, what’s this?”

“Where do we start?” I say in my head. My camera, or lenses? The laptop? the GPS? the books? the dozen cables?

“No, it’s okay, it’s her’s” says the TSA agent manning the metal detector. My bag never gets touched, and I grab, zip up the laptop, and grab a seat to put my shoes back on. All told it was about 30 minutes from drop-off to gate. Not bad.

Now, i’m 3 episodes into Season 4 of “Weeds”, about a 90 minutes left on the laptop, 500 miles out of ABQ and my GPS won’t get a signal. Boo. 38,000 feet closer to the satellites, you think it would work. But I have the aisle seat and i’m in an aluminum tube, so that might be contributing. Captain says we may get into ABQ at 12:10, which now makes me wish I kept the 12:45 shuttle to Santa Fe. Oh well. I wonder if they’ll let me take it anyway.

See you on the ground...