My flight is mid morning today. Woke up to the news that all flights across the country have been disallowed to take off due to FAA system glitches. My hotel room looks straight across to the SFO runway. The runaways are eerily empty. Usually, it is lined by a retinue of planes waiting to take off! Bracing for an interesting journey back home today. (or tomorrow? 🙂 )
My friend, Matt Moore, always takes me to unique coffee places every time I come to San Francisco. This time, he took me to Red Bay Coffee and we had a Charcoal Latte! The coffee is literally sprinkled with finely granulated charcoal powder!! I was fairly intrigued by what it would be like. The coffee was great to taste and I could feel the occasional grain of charcoal on my teeth.
That was a different experience!!
Natasha’s flight yesterday from JFK that was to take off at 12 noon eventually got in the air ten and a half hours late!! Apparently, after boarding all the passengers, they realized that they were one pilot short!!
In any case, throughout the ordeal, I was checking Flightaware to see what their latest info for the flight DL 482 was.
Accidentally, ran into something…
There was a flight DL 482A. I never knew that flight numbers could have letters in them. What is even more intriguing is that Flightaware kept the history and very helpfully informed me that the flight landed over twelve years back!!
Our flight was delayed by about 30 minutes to get out of the gate. Apparently, there were not enough cleaning crew to clean the equipment. In any case, we pushed out of the gate amid heavy rains, lumbered our way to the end of the runway and with the engines springing to full life, started hurtling down the active runway.
It was then that I got this message from Delta that we will be delayed by 5 more hours (till 9:25PM).
A few seconds later, quickly climbing thru the air, I was still scratching my head – What was that all about?
That was as close to being right above Stone Mountain as I have ever been. Just a couple of weeks back, I was there on the top with a bunch of folks that were in my hostel (dorm) back in 1985.
Interesting fact: Stone Mountain used to be called Rock Mountain long time back. And even before that it was called Lone Mountain (in the local Indian language)
Landed in Chicago airport. Flying Delta from Atlanta. In the last 4 years, I have probably done this 80 times or so (counting the pandemic period!). I was on a call as I walked out of the plane, instinctively took a right turn and soon realized that I was totally lost.
Where the heck was I? Why does the airport have so many bright lights? Which airport did I land in?
I walked back to my gate. And took a few minutes to put the whole thing together.
Delta has now moved from Terminal 2 to Terminal 5. Terminal 5 is the international terminal. It is much much better than the previous one. It is so much more spacious, well lit and the Sky Club? infinitely better.
I am really, really happy Delta has moved. Now I have to wait another month till they start Clear in this terminal.
#firstworldproblems
