Flew to Atlanta for the weekend at 7am Friday morning, with my wife and daughter.
Man, that's early.
My wife woke up with the stomach flu at 2:30 Thursday morning, and it really kicked her ass. We were not sure when we went to bed Thursday night that we'd be going ANYWHERE Friday morning.
But when the alarm went off at 4am (jesus...) she felt fine, had no fever, so... we were off!
Got bumped up to first class for the 80 minute flight to Atlanta. The extra room was nice, as we had our 15 month old daughter in our laps.
(no way she was gonna stay in a seat, so we didn't even bother with the pretense.)
She fell asleep as we were taxi-ing for take off, and didn't wake up until after we landed.
I was really, REALLY looking forward to several cups of coffee on the flight down.
First class, they'd be bringing me coffee in a nice china cup, standing at the ready to re-fill it....
nope. They announced that the water lines had froze (!!!) overnight while the plane sat on the tarmac, because, as the flight attendant said "it was built in ecaudor, what do THEY know about cold?" This meant no coffee.
sonofa.....
weekend was ok. My wife finally embraced solid foods Saturday morning, my daughter pulled her usual "I don't like sleeping when we travel" nonsense, then we came home.
To flesh out the weekend, I'll mention that..
My two nieces, 4 and 2 I think, thought my daughter was a wonderful toy. She had a great time, but would occasionally get tired of them, or the dogs, being in her face all the time.
We ate very well.
I haven't found a polite way out of eating homemade biscuits and gravy yet. They're made with such pride, with a dozen follow up "can I get you some mores?"
I just might have to break down and embrace vegetarianism.
Ohio State crushed UofM (good)
but
Penn State made my MSU Spartans look sick. (bad).
Wife's family were the usual assortment of cool, slightly snooty at times, and sit-on-my-ass-and-not-lift-a-finger. Pretty much like any other family, I'd guess.
We were unable to get a direct flight home yesterday. NWA combines with Delta, and we STILL can't get a direct flight from Altanta to Chicago?
WTF?
So our 80 minute travel to Atlanta, was a 5 freakin' hour travel home. 2 hours to Detroit, two hours layover, 1 hour flight home.
We planned it so that our daughter would be drop-dead tired by the time the flight to Detroit took off.
She was.
We fed her as we took off, she fell asleep, just as we planned.
She woke up 35 minutes later, not at all as we planned...
We had to keep her amused for almost 90 minutes.
She's a good sport, and we didn't incur the wrath of anyone on the plane.
which was the most crowded, uncomfortable plane I've ever been on.
But for $2.00, you could buy a pair of ear buds, and watch what ended up being one episode of a bad-sitcom, followed up by 90 minutes of what amounted to advertisements for Disney vacations and Delta flights.
Seems they should have paid us the $2.00.
We landed poorly in Detroit. We... bounced. Then immediately slammed our brakes, or whatever jets do to slow down RIGHT NOW.
Everyone gasped, a couple people yelled out. My daughter - cheered. And then clapped.
Whoo Hoo! best ride ever! let's do it again.
Detroit Metro has spent a lot of $$$$, I was told by my friend Neil, to rehab portions of the airport.
Money well spent!
Additional props to Neil for the heads up on the red trolley, the fountain and the coney joint (read on...)
He travels a lot on business which is why he's so familiar with the airport.
(I prefer that explanation, over any hint that he's been hanging out in the bathrooms there...)
He steered me toward the coney place, if I was looking for something with a bit more local flavor to it.
I asked him if they would also mug me, for a true taste of Detroit.
There's an awesome tunnel from concourse B to A(or A to B, depending on what direction you'r e walking), with surround sound and light shows on the wall. as we walked down the long hallway there, the walls flashed a lightning storm. we thought about just stopping in the middle of the tunnel, and sitting down, to enjoy the show, but kept going. Big eyes and pursed lips from my daughter. She was most impressed.
You come out the other side, and there's a fantastic water fountain, perfectly placed so that little kids can go up to touch it, and then get soaked when they lean up against it and find out that water runs down the outside in a thin, invisible stream...
oopsie.
It really was a cool fountain, though.
A red train rolls by overhead, every few seconds.
There're sushi restaurants, and an Irish pub, a spa that offers 15 minute chair massages (should your chair need a massage) and a place to get a (damn good) coney dog and a mug of beer.
Maybe I'm not ready for vegetarianism, just yet.
Basically, it's an airport for little kids and stoners, two demographics that are woefully under-marketed to, by the various airlines.
All that was missing were gatorade water fountains, a place to play frisbee, and maybe a big purple dinosaur....
We get to our connecting gate with lots of time to spare, at dinner from the coney joint (the mugging comes when you pay for your food...), and tried to tire Fiona out.
I ended up flying her all over concourse A, amusing both her and dozens of fellow passengers. I was the only entertainment to be had, apparently.
I'd fly her around, and bring her back to my wife, a little out of breath. She'd go right to Wendy, then turn around and yell (And sign) for "more airplane" (comes out as "more ap-pee") and then make the plane noise I as just making.
And off we'd go again.
Man, I love being a dad.
Our flight to CHI was fairly uneventful, save for when I couldn't get the battery pack to properly attach to the portable DVD player.
My daughter was just starting to come unglued, finally, after a very long day, when I got the DVD player out of my bag.
She knows what it is, and what it means.
She smiled and started bouncing up and down, signing and saying "Baby!" over and over, because she digs the Baby Signing Time dvds, which we'll refer to as "Baby Crack" going forward.
Then I couldn't get the damn thing to turn on.
Sorry, darlin. No baby signing time for you. I was just messing with you.
Ha Ha! (think Nelson from The Simpsons)
I felt like a total bastard....
But finally got the bad boy to work, she got quiet and happy, and I was not a bad dad anymore.
We finally pulled into the garage at 9pm, an hour and a half AFTER her bedtime.
We were beat.
left the suitcases packed, put the kid to bed, and fell over.
A good weekend. We traveled safely, got along with everyone, and no drunk jackass drove into the front of my house, like happened the last time we got together with my wife's family....
whoo hoo!
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