Like in every trip, this morning too, I checked in my small suitcase, cleared security and strolled towards my gate at DC airport. As most frequent fliers in Delta might know, there is a flight on the hour every hour from DC to Atlanta and the four digit number usually starts with 1 and ends with 39. And in the evening, when they run out of digits, they switch to starting with 2. And the flights always leave from one of the few adjoining gates 16-21.

I reached my gate, looked at the board (see attached picture), checked that Atlanta was written on the board and waited. The boarding had already started. The goal being always to be one of the last passengers to get on to avoid all the rush at the gate, I just walked up and down the area making a few phone calls. Eventually, the queue was coming to an end and I joined it.

Just as I was going to board the plane as literally the last passenger, the machine stopped me. It refused to take my boarding pass much as the gate agent tried. She eventually asked me where I was going. I said Atlanta. She pointed out that, that was the problem. I was trying to board a Alaska Airlines flight headed to Seattle!!

I looked up again – sure enough it said Atlanta. Except, that was for the gate on the left and that flight was not leaving for another three hours!!! I turned around and saw another gate where the boarding was finishIng up. Quickly paced there and of course, that was my flight! Still managed to achieve my goal of being the last person to get on to the plane!! (But not before coming back to the wrong gate to take a picture!!! )

As I finally got on to the plane, the first person I met was the same stewardess who was with us in our flight to DC yesterday. We had chatted for some time to get to know her life story (I am sure you are not surprised 🙂 ). She promptly asked me “Are you stalking me”? I truthfully answered “If I were, I sure am confused where to look for you” :-).

It had been a long day. I was returning home. And a teammate was connecting thru Atlanta. I knew I wanted to go home as early as I could but I could not resist spending an hour with this teammate of mine – if you knew Mark Meade yourself, you would know that I am not the one to blame.
Anyways, the whole idea was to go to a bar and order something and talk a little about business. We sure went to a bar. And ordered a drink.
And the rest of the plan fell apart. We just started talking to the two persons on our either side. And the four of us just kept talking as if we had been friends for a long time! Eventually, we found out that both were chefs – one (Ron) for the much acclaimed “One Flew South” at Atlanta airport and the other (John) had a business of his own. As strange as it might sound, they found out that they were in the same business at that bar while talking to us. And that too because John had missed a flight!
Mark and I was like – “Forget work…. Let’s find out what a day in a chef’s life looks like….”
We had a great evening..

This is in a local bar…

I had to get up very early morning and hit the road to get to an early morning flight. I guess I was a little sleepy or the onramps to I-94 from downtown Milwaukee were too confusing – I landed up taking a couple of wrong turns.

You could almost detect a faint sense of frustration come thru Google Maps as the voice sternly asked me to take a “slight left turn”. Except that there were two left turns there and the last time I took the “slight” one, I landed up on the wrong road and had to come back up again. Which apparently led Google Maps to get slighted.

So, I glanced down to see if I could get some visual clues from the phone. And that is when I caught Siri cussing “f” words at me 🙂

Jokes aside, what was that all about?

I could hear the wheels of the plane coming down. That was my cue to take the earplugs off the Amjad Sabri qawwali I was enjoying and pack my stuff up to land. Moment I took my earplugs out, I could hear a lot yelling going on upfront. It appeared two male passengers were yelling at each other. One of them – a rather young gentleman – was clearly out of control. And there was a young lady trying desperately to defuse the situation. My biggest fear was it was a case of a psychiatric patient gone wrong. (Having two parents with psychiatric issues, that is often my first conclusion).

We landed smoothly and reached quickly to the gate. But you could see the person was perturbed – he just would not sit down and follow instructions. Full credit to Delta air hostesses for keeping their calm. It took us a couple of minutes after reaching the gate to get instructions to get up. At that point, I was sure it was a security issue. Very efficiently, St. Louis airport police showed up and promptly took him away without any incident. I later found out he was totally under the influence…

I took a few pictures but am posting one that does not show his face just to respect his right to privacy.

Never ever have I experienced this before…

Flew directly over the snow capped Statue of Liberty this morning….