Airports

I have spent a considerable amount of time in airports this past year. There have been a few times I've been fortunate enough to fly in one of Amway's corporate aircraft.  In addition to a great on-flight experience, the nice thing about flying corporate is the time savings.  Parking is right outside the doors of our hangar and there's no check-in process and security lines. Sometimes there are delays, but there are just as many times that we finish a meeting early and we're able to get in the air sooner than scheduled.  How often does that happen when flying commercial?!

At this point I'm daydreaming about corporate flights because I'm sitting in the terminal at Gerald R. Ford International, Grand Rapids' airport. My flight that was supposed to leave at 7 a.m. was cancelled, so now I'm not leaving til 2 p.m.  That leaves me here for several more hours. My daughter brought me here early this morning and went back home and to bed.  My wife worked last night and is sleeping in a little before taking kids to church.  In other words, being the nice guy that I am, I didn't want to wake them up to make the 20-minute drive each way to get me.  There's a Starbucks here and free Wi Fi so I'm all set to wait it out.

Before this past winter, I've never had anything more serious than a flight delay happen.  My luggage was delayed half a day once when I went to the Dominican Republic, but I survived.  This winter, however, I had flights cancelled twice while on the road. The first time left me stuck at O'Hare in Chicago, where I was able to get the last room at the Hilton built into the airport at 11:30 p.m.  Snow prevent us from taking off that day.  Then, a month or so later, after traveling back from Prague ALL DAY, I was stuck in Minneapolis overnight because it was too snowy in GR.  The worst part about that was that my early afternoon flight was cancelled and they put me on an early evening flight that was also cancelled ... by the time I had vouchers in hand and a room booked at the offsite hotel and all was said and done, it was too late to go to The Mall of the Americas, which I could see from my hotel window. I'd never been there, and that would have been just about the only redeeming factor of a forced overnight stay.

While I'm sitting here, I'm seeing others from Amway heading off to flights to go to the same destination as me. Their flight is not cancelled, but it's full.  So here I sit.  Waiting.  By the time I get there tonight, I will have missed a committee meeting and the opening event of the conference. Ugg. 

Ok... I have to keep reminding myself, free WiFi and a Starbucks ... free WiFi and a Starbucks ... it's OK that I'm still sitting here waiting for the airline that has charged us a pretty penny to fly like cattle in steerage to get me on a plane, because there's free WiFi and a Starbucks...