Saturday, December 20, 2008

home again home again jiggity jig

Well I ventured home today to spend the holidays with my fam, and I flew up instead of driving the whole way by myself. Luckily New Bern has its own airport, and it's not too far from the apartment. So, I only had to wake up at 4 a.m. to catch my 5:30 flight. We got there as the airport was opening (being so used to BWI, I didn't know airports closed) and I quickly discovered my plane was the only one there. No one arrived in New Bern, the plane must have just been sitting there waiting for us. And it continued to sit, as we were delayed an hour due to fog. And after seeing how bad the fog was outside I decided an hour wasn't really bad at all.

Now on the plane, and an hour late I realized I would be pushing it to catch my connecting flight from Charlotte to BWI, which was to leave at 7:51. I wasn't scheduled to arrive in Charlotte until 7:58. Pretty close. The pilot assured us that Charlotte was experiencing delays as well and we would all most likely make our connections.

Lucky me, the Baltimore flight was one of the few NOT delayed, or cancelled. And, it also happened to be on the complete opposite side of the Charlotte airport, the last gate in it's concourse. We also arrived at the last gate in our concourse.

I'll take a minute right now to tell you about the first plane. I've been on small planes before, and ones with propellers, but this time I got the seat right next to the propeller. I couldn't take my eyes off of it, right outside my window, about 4 feet from my face spinning at an ungodly rate. Anyway, this plane was so small that it didn't fit at the terminal, so we had to walk across the tarmac at Charlotte. I don't know if you know the Charlotte airport, but it's huge. It's like walking across the tarmac at BWI. Weird.

The Charlotte airport is so big in fact it took me a good 10 minutes to walk from my arrival gate to my departure gate. Conveniently enough, that was 5 minutes too long for me to make my connection. I've never missed a flight before and I didn't know what to do. Well I wandered around until I found a long line of familiar people. They were all from my previous flight, and had apparently missed connections as well. It ended up that I faired better then most, and I made it on a 9:45 flight out of Charlotte to Baltimore. No standby either, I had an assigned seat! So I have now arrived safely in MD, and my luggage even made it in on the same flight I did, which I am EXTREMELY grateful for! So I'm home with everything I need and I can't wait for the holidays to get started!

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