Nightmare avoided

I suppose everyone has heard about the problems with American Airlines this week. That is the airline I fly between Minneapolis and Dallas.

My 8:20pm flight tonight (Thursday) from Dallas to Minneapolis was canceled early this morning. I called AA to see what they could do for me. The reservations person said he could put me on the 4pm flight. I happen to know that thr 4pm flight is an MD80 - the aircraft that has been grounded. I asked him if he could guarantee that it wouldn't be canceled. He said no.

I knew there was a Sun Country flight available. He said he couldn't switch me to them because AA doesn't have an agreement with them. He then hung up on me!!!

I called American Express Travel which handles all are travel arrangements. They got me on the AA 12:40pm flight. The AA reservations guy didn't even offer that flight to me. The 12:40pm flight is the only one between MSP and DFW that is not an MD80.

The other side of the story is that the weather in Minneapolis was to get really bad by late evening. This morning the weather folks were calling for 8-10 inches of snow! If I hadn't been able to get on the early afternoon flight, it was going to be a long day.

But I'm home and comfortable. And have to go back to Dallas next week!!!!

Uptown with Rachel

Rachel Druker, a friend from Minneapolis, is in Dallas this week. She works for the American Heart Association and travels here frequently, too.

We finally connected for dinner last night. She has done more wondering around than I have and knows how to get around. She picked me up at my hotel and we went over to the Uptown area of Dallas. It is a trendy area with lots of restaurants.

We dodged the rain storms and went to an Italian restaurant. It was okay but not spectacular.

It was great to spend some time with a friend and away from the IBM project and to see a new part of town. I forgot to take a self-portrait with Rachel...my apologies to her for not being able to feature her.

What's with Dallas weather forecasters?

How come all the TV weather folks in Dallas only forecast the weather for the Dallas - Fort Worth area, which they call the Metroplex? I've watched every station and they all just have maps of North Texas. They don't even show the weather for Houston or San Antonio.

At least in Minneapolis they show pretty much the whole country with weather coming in from Pacific coast and down from Canada or Alaska.

Fitness update

Been working with the personal trainers at Fitness Together for 7 months now. Had my fifth fitness evaluation yesterday. Here are some of the results.

My weight has gone from 196.8 to 193.2. Not much of a change but it has been as low as 190. But the big difference and better indicator is lean (muscle) weight versus fat weight.

My lean weight has gone from 168.6 to 172.2, almost 4 lbs of muscle. The fat weight has gone from 28.2 to 21 lbs., over 7 lbs of lost fat. This gives me a bodyfat percentage of 10.9% where a value of 16.3 is considered well above average. I would like to get the bodyfat into the single digits.

Pontiac G6 - again

Nothing new to report really except the key fob didn't work this week. Amazing how you get dependent on locking and unlocking your doors with that thing.

I thought when I locked the driver door with the key, all the other doors would lock. Turns out that wasn't happening and I didn't find out until the last day. No big deal. Nothing happened to the car. But if you click the door lock button inside the vehicle then close the door, all the doors lock on their own and the car honked its horn?! Go figure.

A travel tip

If you where dress shoes when traveling, put a shoe horn in your carry on bag. It really helps with getting your shoes back on after going through security.

Another thing is you don't have to take your belt off as long as you don't have any other metals or you belt doesn't have a big metal buckle. The metal detector is cummulative so be be sure to take off watch and remove coins.

I would suggest not traveling with me

I guess I can't complain too much but flight last night from Dallas was about an hour late. Some really big storms in the area and the incoming flight was diverted way south then way some where else.

Once it landed they did a pretty fast job of turning it around. I got upgraded to first class and was the first one down the gang plank/gate way. Had to wait outside the plane while the cleaning staff finished up. The gate attendant asked the pilot what was the delay so that's when I heard the story of flying all over. He then went outside and checked the plane pretty thoroughly. He even had a flashlight.

I was in the first row of first class so was closests to the cockpit. I could hear the automatic pilot voice telling the pilots how far off the ground we were when we were landing. "Fifty feet...thirty feet....ten feet....five...." It was kind of disconcerting.

This is a short turn around this week. I go back to Dallas on Monday.