Last week turned out to be pretty rough. I had to go to Tampa again for 1.5 days worth of meetings. I flew from Moline to Atlanta. Then Atlanta to Tampa. As usual, no problems in Tampa, just Atlanta.
When I got to Atlanta, I found my flight gate number on the screens, and it was T04. I hadn’t heard of this T terminal before. But, I got on the train, and it stopped there, no problem. I got off of the train, and looked to the left, but you can’t see anything, just a long hallway. I looked to the right and saw a an escalator with a sign that said To T over it. I went up the escalator and saw another long hallway. I thought it looked a little weird, but the sign said that it went to T terminal, so I followed it. I knew that this was also the way to baggage claim, and didn’t want to leave the secured area. Once I got to the end of this other long hall, I got on another set of escalators and about halfway up saw the friggin welcome to Atlanta sign, ie. I was going into baggage claim.
I was not very happy, because I assumed that I was going to have to go through security and had a good chance of missing my flight. I stopped and talked to the first security guy that was at the top of the escalators and told him what was going on. He told me that I should have taken the train, I told him I did. He told me that I would have to go through security again. I told him I was probably f!*%$d then. He was polite, and nice, but didn’t care at all.
I went through security, the lines were pretty short, the first time I have seen this in Atlanta. I got through pretty fast and luckily, this T04 gate was not far from the security check area, and I made it in time. My advice, if your gate in Atlanta is T anything, take a left when you get off of the train.
After we boarded the aircraft, we sat on the taxiway for about half an hour. After that we taxied for about another 20 minutes. We finally got onto the runway, and then stopped. A storm was blowing through, and we had to wait for it to pass over. It took about an hour. I was 2 hours late getting to Tampa, and since I hadn’t eaten anything for supper, I was pretty hungry. Got to the hotel around 11. Ate something that was not very good. Messed around for another half hour trying to get an iron from the front desk. By the time I got to sleep it was pretty late.
Had some meetings. Went out to eat, and went bowling, which was really a lot of fun. But I also caught a cold and started getting a sore throat, and just felt like shit mostly. Had to get up earlier the next day. Couldn’t get to sleep. Woke up feeling even worse Friday. The plane ride home was ok, except that my ears wouldn’t pop because of my cold. Once we got up to altitude, they equalized, but as soon as we started the descent, they got messed up again.
Got home last night around 10. Ate, and went to bed. I didn’t want to get up this morning, but my 4 yr. old insisted. What a week.