2004
Monday, July 12

Crazy day of traveling!

I didn't get much sleep at all during the night. I really slept from 2:30am until 4:30am. I stayed up packing, making sure the house was in "OK" shape and also ordered birthday gifts that were due before I would be back.

A friend of mine, Gabe Lusa Sr., picked me up at 5am to drop me off at the airport. We discussed problems with his computer on the way there. Once at the airport, I stood in line to check in (overseas flights not allowed on eTicket machines). Once checked in, I headed to C gate. Before there, security routed everyone to gate B (didn't know you could get to C from B... have to remember that since the line is generally smaller).

It turns out every one of my flights was delayed. The first one from St. Louis to La Guardia, NY was delayed by an hour. I had a scheduled layover of 8.5 hours at JFK. It turned out to be 9.5 hours. Once in La Guardia, I found an $11 shuttle to JFK. I met a couple of backpackers headed to Europe and we discussed our plans. When I landed, I had 4 voicemails which indicated Erica's flight had been cancelled. It turned out her flight from Columbus to Newark, NJ was cancelled. She had luckily gotten to the airport early enough to take an earlier flight for the same route, so she was fine (except a dumb and repetitive lecture from a Continental employee about not having her phone number on the reservation).

Once at JFK, I found a McDonald's and had some lunch (2 cheeseburgers large value meal for $6). Since my layover was so long, I had considered going to Times Square, etc. but decided I would be better off waiting at the airport. I didn't want to miss my flight and have Erica waiting even longer for me (she already had a 4 hour scheduled wait). I spent the time going through all my Junk emails (900+) and listening to music. During the wait, I also had a coffee, Coke and pizza.

Once on the plane, I sat right behind First class next to a guy from Africa. We had to wait for people on another delayed flight. Ironically, the weather in Newark, NJ (where my sister was headed from Columbus to Rome) was causing flight delays throughout the area.

Speaking of Rome, why is it Rome instead of Roma? Shouldn't it be called what people from Roma like to call it? Why is everything renamed? Florence is Firenze. Venice is Venezia (or something like that). Why don't we call cities what the people living there call it? The english word for Roma should be Roma!

My flight headed from JFK (NY) to Brussels and was scheduled to land 10 minutes after Erica landed in Roma.