Flights of Fancy

My travel from Atlanta to Albuquerque was relatively uneventful. I actually breezed through airport security as quickly as I have in El Paso. Mind you, that's because I was there at 5:00 a.m. (Wait for it.) My flight wasn't scheduled to depart until 7:45 a.m., but since Atlanta is such a busy airport, my shuttle service suggested I get there at 5:00, so they booked me a seat on the 3:00 shuttle -- which meant I had to wake up at 2:00 a.m. (And, thanks to one of my bowling teammates being chatty all night, we were the last team to finish, so I got to bed an hour later than usual, so I had all of 4.5 hours in bed, the equivalent of a good nap, before I had to get up again.) Then, as I had anticipated, my mom wanted my company until the news ended at 10:30 p.m. (12:30 a.m. back in Chattanooga), so I was up for 22.5 hours. Man, it's good to be able to sleep in!

It was kind of nice that the steward gave me an entire can of ginger ale instead of just a cup full of ice and a tiny splash of soda. However, it would've been nice if they gave me peanuts or pretzels or something, too. I hadn't had breakfast, after all. (And, if Southwest Airlines can continue to serve snacks and not declare bankruptcy, why can't the other airlines?) It was exactly for this reason that I packed protein bars: one for breakfast and another for lunch. (I am not going to pay $8.00 for nothing more than a single, solitary sandwich! Why is food more expensive in airports than the rest of the civilized world?)

I took a shuttle from The Noog to Atlanta because I preferred paying $69 rather than the extra $200 or so for the convenience of flying directly from Chattanooga. I saved money and didn't have to drive on little sleep, in the dark, to an airport I had never visited before.

Well, that's not quite true. I have been to the Atlanta aiport several times, but I haven't actually ever departed from there. Come to think of it, maybe that's why the security checkpoint wasn't as traumatic as I expected. Atlanta is a hub airport, so they have a lot of planes arriving and departing, but most of the passengers merely go from one concourse to another, without having to pass through security. (Still, I don't want to test this theory by flying out of there when everyone else is awake, too.)

I took a local shuttle as well from the ABQ airport to my mom's house (it's slightly cheaper than the cab I'm going to have to use when I depart at dark-fifteen in the morning, when it's too early for the shuttle service to operate because only freaks like me can wake up that early).

As I waited outside the terminal for the van, I had my jacket open. It was 36 degrees (the coldest day it had been, I guess in honor of my arrival), but I wasn't cold. I was warm. (I think humid cold is entirely different than arid cold.) It was sunny. (I had gotten out of the South scant hours before the snow was due to fall.) I was at the start of two weeks of doing nothing but sitting in my mom's family room and reading. I was smiling.

After I had made arrangements and paid, the guy behind the counter had said, "Welcome home." Truer, sweeter words had never been uttered to me.