Smackie the Frog

As has been discussed on here before, I’m kind of an idiot when it comes to how I travel. I have been known to base my travel arrangements on the most interesting flights, and not on what will make my life the easiest. Well on Tuesday, on my trip back from California, I hit a new low, even for me, and it has me reconsidering my entire travel philosophy.

I mentioned before that I planned my flights back so that I could fly on a propeller driven airplane as opposed to a jet airplane. And that happened. I left San Jose around 9:45 in the morning, and 30 minutes later landed in Sacramento, which is really just up the road. I earned 95 frequent flier miles, so I’m guessing that is a pretty good estimate of the distance covered. In air travel terms, that is nothing.

So there I was, 30 minutes later, in Sacramento, at the entirely wrong terminal. And in Sacramento, if you are at the wrong terminal, you have to leave the building and catch a bus to the correct terminal. And by “leave the building” I mean that I had to exit through security. Which meant that I had to go back through security again. Two times in about two hours. Fun. And then I sat around the Sacramento airport for 2 hours waiting for my next flight.

This flight was all the way to Salt Lake City, which is really not that far away. It only took about an hour and a half, and on this flight something really interesting happened. A woman started having trouble breathing and they had to ask if there were any doctors on the plane. So for the last half of the flight all of the flight attendants were scrambling around trying to make sure this woman didn’t die. And then when we landed we were stuck on the plane for 30 minutes while the paramedics came on and checked on her and then hauled her off. Luckily, I wasn’t in a rush.

My flight from Salt Lake City to St. Louis left 2 hours later, so I got some food and then waited. Eventually we boarded, and this flight was on a little regional jet, which really aren’t that bad, but for a 2.5 hour flight it starts to get a little long. Except my flight wasn’t 2.5 hours. It was more like 4, because as soon as we pushed back from the gate the Captain announced that there was a mechanical problem, and we had to sit around, waiting for them to fix the plane. That took about an hour and a half, all things considered.

Finally we took off, and I did get back to St. Louis around 10:30 at night. I left Phil’s apartment around 10:00 St. Louis time, so it ended up taking me about 12 hours and three flights to make it back home, which is a completely ridiculous amount of time for that journey. But I achieved my goals. Next time, however, I will be flying non-stop.