Ah, I love to travel. To see cool places, see old friends and family, meet new people, eat good food.
Ah, I hate to travel. Stuck in traffic, bad weather, cancelled flights, cheap airport food…
So this past weekend I drove to Rochester NY to visit family (more to follow later), and then flew to Jacksonville FL for business.
One thing that I love about flying is to be able to enjoy a new perspective on things. You can see clouds from above, fleets of tiny little yellow school buses… It is fun for a map geek like me to try to identify locations below from memory. Unfortunately, I traveled mostly at night and through cloudy skies, so I only managed to ID Philadelphia PA, Savannah GA and JFK Airport. But on the plus side, the distant thunderstorms were pretty fireworks to see, kinda like paper lanterns winking on and off. And I had a great view of the crescent moon rising.
Clouds over the east coast:
Philadelphia:
I didn’t get time to explore Jacksonville or the surrounding beaches, which I’ve been told, are very nice… Maybe I’ll come back in the winter when it’s cooler and the humidity is below 120%? Here is my drive-by pic of Jacksonville:
Actually, work in JAX was pretty interesting – a new experience for me. We are developing a product with a partner in the area, and we had a lab evaluation of the device with a cadaver head. Hmmm… I’m afraid I just can’t resist the temptation… “Now THAT’s what I call a deadhead!”
Boring facts that I had time to think about during my five hours in the airport at Philly:
– I spent 42 hours with family, 8 hours at work and 26 hours traveling.
– I had the same kind of sandwich for dinner at the same time at the same restaurant in the same airport on consecutive days.
– Out of a hundred or more gates, I arrived at one gate on my outbound trip, and then was scheduled to depart through the same gate on the return trip (until my flight was cancelled).
– On the return trip, I arrived at one gate, and finally departed through the same gate (after my connecting flight was cancelled).
– I spent almost as much time in the airport as Tom Hanks did for his movie.
More clouds:
Another plane flying along in the same direction:
Rochester International Airport:
It’s fun to ride a little puddle jumper through a storm!
