Visit with mom

Some of you may not know that my mom has been in the hospital lately. She is home now and on hospice care.

She first went in the hospital about 3 weeks ago for 3 or 4 day. She was sent home with medication for coronary heart disease. She has two major blockages and an aneurism. She was only home for a few days and had to go back to hospital.

The second hospital stay was a total of 7 days. She is home now with my niece Kathy staying with her and a hospice nurse and aide visiting occasionally.

I visited her while she was in the hospital the second time and the first days of this last home stay.

Sunrise at the MSP airport waiting to fly to DCA

I picked up my brother John from Union Station downtown DC

We passed the new Museum of African American Culture and History

For the first time ever, I stopped to see the Abingdon House site at National Airport.

I have passed the site dozens of times over the decades. The moments of reflection were very welcomed.

"lucky" Denver trip

Another business trip to Denver. Was planned a while back but only booked on Friday. My ex-employer and now contractor has an unbelievably inefficient or ineffective accounting process.

Anyway, because of the late booking I flew Frontier airlines for the first time. For some reason I thought my departure was at 7am. That is when the Delta flight is scheduled.

Since I've never flown Frontier and don't really see myself doing it on a regular basis, I figured I would check-in the old-fashioned way... at the counter. I was kind of surprised that there wasn't a line. Lucky.

The counter agent was extremely nice and accommodating. I got an aisle seat near the front just like I like. Lucky.

And I did not have to pay for my luggage. Frontier charges $25 for checked luggage and $35nfor carry on! The agent said it was luck that I didn't have to pay.

I got through regular TSA security on a breeze. So lucky.

Frontier's MSP gates are at the top of the E Concourse and right across from my favorite Caribou Coffee. Lucky.

There was a big crowd at the gate which I could not figure out. Jeff Pasoult, the local Fox News anchor, was going to be taking the same flight...odd coincidence. It turned out the big crowd was because the plane was boarding already! Instead of a 7am departure it was a 6:15 scheduled departure. I took my coffee and scone and boarded...I was in zone 1. Lucky.

And then the luck ended. Maintenance came on board... always a bad sign. Eventually the pilot got on the intercom to announce that some fins or blades in one of the engines were bent. It had to be determined if the damage was flyable.

About an hour later the pilot announced that we would be flying after all. Not sure if that was real luck. But guess what, our departure was at 7:15am like I originally thought!

DFW to MSP -- old times

For those of you that have been following my blog you know I traveled back and forth from Minneapolis to Dallas for several years.  I flew American Airlines all that time and got to recognize and be recognized by a few of the Minneapolis-based flight attendants. I also accumulated a lot of miles and reach Executive Platinum status which got me to first class nearly every flight.

Last night I flew that same route from DFW to MSP and one of the flight attendants was a "regular" that I remembered. And she remembered me! And remembered my fondness for red wine. Her name is Kathy and we had a nice chat as she was sitting in the jump seat right next to me in the back of the plane.

Kathy was always the lead flight attendant and therefore worked first class. I no longer have status on American so was sitting way in the back. For some reason Kathy was working the regular cabin and not first class. We got caught up on both of our work "stories" and discussed the American - US Airways merger.

What a treat to feel "at home" on my trip home.

Explain this one

I decided to check my carrying tonight rather than take on board.  I was seated near the front of the plane and figured there wouldn't be space overhead near my seat.

Turned out there was plenty of room.

And here's the kicker.  The luggage carousel that our flight was assigned was the absolutely farthest it could be.

Was the idea that by the time we walked across the airport, we would be impressed with how fast the luggage arrived?

It did arrive fairly soon.  And miracle if miracles my bag was the fourth one.

Spectacular moon

The only good thing about getting up at 4am to get to the airport in time for a 7 am flight was seeing a super bright moon shining in a slightly cloudy sky. It was a beautiful site.

My kitchen is torn up for the new counter top install on Friday. So there was no fixing breakfast at home.  I was expecting long lines at airport security now that the holidays are over.  But the lines were shorter than they've been in a long time.  I grabbed a coffee at my mid terminal Carabou - the one with the super hot coffee. Igot some yogurt and two hardboiled eggs at one of the new CIBO merchants on concourse G.

This week I've rented a Ford Fusion with Sync.  I'm going to test the portability of MySync

Canceled flight?

Woke up this morning at 4:30am to my cell phone ringing.  It was Delta letting me know that my 7:30am flight was canceled.  Delta also let me know that I had already been re-booked on the 7:30am flight. 

It didn't really make sense. Had they booked me on a different airline? I know that US Airways has a flight at about the same time or was it a connecting flight? I thought one of the messages said the arrival time was 1:0-something.

Come to find out it was a 7:30am Delta direct flight from Minneapolis to Charlotte landing at 10:30am Charlotte time...a half hour earlier than the regularly scheduled flight.  I'm guessing that the difference is the first flight is operated by Compass for Delta and the revised flight is operated by Delta itself.  

The best thing about the change is the revised flight is a bigger plane.  I got moved closer to the front and on the aisle and a row by myself.

Because of the 4:30 wake up call, I got to the airport even earlier than last week.  The security lines were even worse which seems to indicate that being early does not pay off. The non-priority line actually looked shorter so I thought I'd conduct an experiment.

I picked a guy with an orange shirt in the priority line to see which one of us got through security first.  He did. The non-priority maze was longer and the id checkers - one for priority and one for non-priority - would sometimes let the priority person go through the non-priority check.

Something going on at MSP

There was something going on at Minnespolis-St. Paul International this morning. When I was going to get into the security line, there was a police officer telling everyone in line to go to another security entrance. I'm pretty sure it was not a TSA person.

Then when our plane was getting ready to get on the runway for takeoff, two police vehicles came down the runway from the opposite direction! The two vehicles passed in front of our plane with their lights going. They pulled over next to each other near the NWA repair hanger and the same 747 that was parked out there from last week when we had to turn around.

Looked on Star Tribune web site but didn't see anything. Anyway, made it to Dallas with no delays or problems.