My trip home was relatively uneventful. Knoxville Airport (it has a fancy name for some local Influential Fellow, but I don’t recall what it is) is nice, if not particularly well-appointed with stores and eateries. It does, though, have rocking chairs at the picture windows, which is nice (even though they are a bit uncomfortable.
Little commuter plane back up to O’Hare … but air traffic delays got us in a little late. And then we discovered that we couldn’t just go straight from the United Express concourse (F-gates) over to the United Sluggardly concourse (B-gates), but had to exit out to the sidewalk and be readmitted through security. Hilarity ensued, especially for folks with tight connections.
After a while, they started mentioning this problem on the loudspeaker, and offering the explanation of a “security breach” at yet another terminal.
Then I read this and realized that it was all because some metal detector had been unplugged for four minutes. Great.
Anyway, trundled off down the concourse, thinking I’d need to grab something to eat for dinner. I was also glad, given the security snafu, that I hadn’t stopped by the F-gates to eat.
Huge, huge, throng at the gate for my Denver flight. The tres cool displays over the gate indicated boarding was beginning in 1 minute.
A minute comes a minute goes, along with a dozen or so of its brethren, and I went and grabbed a sandwich at a nearby booth. Eventually we were all loaded on to the 747 (and with some comfort, as the reverse of my original travel problem occured — rather than the normal 777, which had mechanical difficulty, we ended up with a 747, which carries more passengers, not less. Imagine that.
Uneventful flight, reading reading reading, until we arrived in Denver. At which point, two observations.
First: 747s are big Seeing the wings, with the flaps down, drove home how really frickin’ big those birds are.
Second: Oh, look. It’s snowing.
The latter led to an entertaining (not!) and relaxing (yeesh!) drive back home, with the aggravations of spinning out of control mostly avoided by taking on instead the aggravations of driving behind snowplows with speeds of 25-35mph.
But … I’m home! Exhausted, but home.