Back in the Bean

After several hours spent in the tension-filled Charlotte-Douglas International Airport yesterday evening, I finally arrived home to Lowell Street at 12:45am, a full 3 hours past when my flight was supposed to land initially. This, of course, was due to the delayed flights of my airline, AirTran, and, while I wasn't particularly bothered or perturbed by the delays, there were some folks that were extremely upset. All in all, the flights were enjoyable, and I was blessed to have one of my friends pick me up from the airport. Most of the snow has melted now, and the temperature is significantly warmer than when I left last Friday.

Between traveling from Boston last Friday and traveling last night, I have now spent a total of 5 minutes in the Baltimore airport. That's right, 5 minutes. I literally had to sprint from the gate last Friday to board the plane to Charlotte, and, although I had to go from Gate D2 to Gate D27, I made it in record time. Last night was very similar, except that I arrived with my compatriots from Charlotte as the plane was being cleaned, and so we had to wait about 5 minutes to board. All in all, the "D" Concourse of the Baltimore airport is very nice and quite clean.

I think my total travel time, including last Friday and last night, comes out to somewhere around 17 or 18 hours, a stunningly high number when you consider that the actual flight time from Boston to Charlotte is only 1 hour 53 minutes. If you subtract the total flight time, which is 3 hours and 46 minutes, from the rest, you get an absurd amount of time that I was either riding a train, riding a bus, riding in a car, waiting in the airport, or waiting on the plane. [My plane from Boston was delayed in taxi-ing from the terminal because another airline was trying to be slick and slide in one plane after another one had left the terminal. This caused our plane to leave around the time we were supposed to land in Baltimore.]

Suffice it to say that my Christmastime flight experience was quite comical, very adventuresome, and without many dull moments. I was thankful to have a week to spend time with my family and close friends, celebrating the birth of Christ, and am now thankful to be back in the swing of things here in Beantown.

Happy New Year!