A Welcome and a Weekend

I have decided to make the switch from Xanga/Livejournal to blogger.com. I've been thinking of a good opening post for awhile, and although there have been a number of topics considered, the events of this weekend are just too much not to write about.

This weekend I went back to Indiana for a quick trip for Jay's high school graduation open house. I arrived in Fort Wayne late Friday night and flew out early on Sunday morning. I made it back to Berne with no problems at all. However, after being at my parents' house for about an hour, I get a phone call from my wife. She's in tears, as she was in an accident, hitting a parked vehicle while trying to find a friend's apartment. The car was not really drivable and she was shook up, but there were no injuries to her apart from a bruised ego, thankfully. We exchanged multiple phone calls over the next 14 hours or so as we were trying to take care of insurance issues and getting a rental car and all that jazz. Now, there is a nice little red car sitting in front of our apartment. I don't know why, but I've always found red cars to be a bit too flashy for me, and now having to drive one, my fears have been confirmed. However, that is not important to the story.

Saturday afternoon/evening I participated in Jay's graduation open house. My mom made far too much food, which she always does, but it was all excellent food. I also was able to reconnect with one of my favorite teachers from high school as well as a couple of dear friends that I hadn't spoken to since Christmas. Both conversations were welcome, as it is always nice to pick back up with people that you haven't seen for some time, and have it be as though you were never really apart.

I stayed up far too late with my family on Saturday evening, given that I had to be up at 4:45 to head to the airport for a 6:45 flight. My flight from Fort Wayne to Dallas was going very well up until we got about 100 miles from Dallas. The pilot came on the intercom and said that we would be in a holding pattern here for some time as Dallas was having thunderstorms. Ironically, when flying back from Josh and Stacy's wedding, we were unable to fly into Dallas right away due to storms. We eventually were re-routed to Fort Smith, Arkansas, as we began to run low on fuel. We got off the plane while waiting out the storm. Eventually, we reboarded and were off to Dallas on what was supposed to be a 40 minute flight. Everything was supposedly about an hour delayed at Dallas, so a 40 minute flight would leave me with 35 minutes to make my connecting flight to Waco. However, the 40 minute flight turned into a 60 minute flight. I began to get a little nervous as I now would have 15 minutes to make my connecting flight. We then waited at the gate for 10 minutes for someone to let us off the plane. I now had 5 minutes to make my connecting flight. However, the flight had been delayed an extra 10 minutes, so I had hopes of making it. I ran through the terminal (through 30 gates) with my bags, and made it to the gate with 7 minutes to spare. I walk up to the counter and ask about the Waco flight. They informed me that it closed about 2 minutes ago and I didn't make it. I pointed out the window and said that the plane is still at the gate, with the walkway connected to it. Is there any way I could make it on the plane? They said there was not, and I asked when I could get a flight to Waco. The next open spot on a plane was for Monday morning. This arrangement would not work, given that I have class in the morning and I'm not going to wait 20 hours for a flight when I'm a 2 hour drive away from my home. I asked about shuttling me to the Waco airport on the ground, but they said they didn't do that. I told them that I knew that wasn't true as they've done it for people I know. They then said that it has to be at the very least 10 people to do it, and that is only if there are not flights that day still or something like that. All this time, the walkway remained attached to the plane that I was supposed to be on. The flight time had been delayed an additional 15 minutes while I was talking to them, but they would still not let me on the plane. I finally asked about a refund for my ticket from Dallas to Waco as I'd just have my wife pick me up, and they informed me I'd have to speak to someone at the ticket counter, which is outside of security, which also meant that I would be unable to get any food or anything like that. I was informed that a partial refund (as opposed to a refund for the entire trip) cannot be handled at the airport, so they gave me the contact information to get my refund as well as a standby ticket so I could get through security to get food while waiting on my wife. I did check and see the likelihood of getting on the flight I was standby for, and it was overbooked... just like every flight from Dallas to Waco yesterday. There was no chance of me getting on since they were struggling to get people to get off. (On a side note, I did see the David Crowder Band across the waiting area. I thought about going to talk to them, but decided that I was in too fowl of a mood to enjoy an encounter like that. Anyway, I live in the same town as them. I'll probably run into them at Ninfa's or some place like that.)

So I waited for my wife to come pick me up in the little red rental car. I ate some lunch, translated some German, and read some Aristotle. Two hours later, she arrived, and we got back to our apartment around 5:00 pm. It was a long weekend to say the least, especially concerning transportation for the Schwartz family!

Before wrapping this up, I have one more beef with airports. On Friday night, my layover in Dallas was over suppertime. There was a Pizza Hut express near my gate, so I was going to eat there until I saw that it was $9.50 to get a personal pan pizza, breadsticks and pop... and there was only one pizza and one set of breadsticks in the warmer and the expiration time was about 10 minutes away, so they'd been there for awhile. I decided for $2 more, I could go to Chili's Too and get better, more filling food... so I did. It was good. But I don't understand why in the world they charge so incredibly much at airports for food apart from the fact that they can. Damn capitalism!

Anyway, welcome to the new home of my thoughts. I'll try to post semi-regularly with various thoughts about life and events that occur. Please comment when you like!