1 August 2007

Travel (At Last) Day 1

Posted by BaBa under: Travel .

08/01/2007
How do I start with our last day in Atlanta? As you read from the entries above — I began by going over the first two days of this week.

I worked and worked on the infamous ToDo List, my version. MaMa had her own list and let me say they were really large. That is the list that gets longer and longer as the time to accomplish the items on it shrinks exponentially.

We began the day by going to school — yes my leave started today, but still things to do. Mama helped me film my class opening (45 minutes of instruction). I printed the last documents and did a colleague a favor. We spent two hours and ten minutes there.

We returned home with several items still to accomplish. I needed to talk to the registrar’s office to know that my grades would be entered. After several calls, I found out right before we left for the airport, that the error was repaired. WHEW.

I got the garage straighten up, no small task, so that both vehicles could go back into the garage. We then, with minutes to spare, marked the location for electrical outlets on the new porch addition. I will still have to send an email about this when we get to China. It is time to start the trip and go off to the airport.

Back to the Regularly Scheduled Trip Blog —

Welcome to the Atlanta Airport and check in. We bypassed one enormous line at Delta to go to the full service check in counter. There was lady who was in the process of spending 3 hours repacking her 45 bags to go to God Knows Where. The agents were more patient than I ever could have been. We had fun with our ticket or should I say MaMa’s ticket. The computer wanted to say that there was unexpensed segment on her ticket or something of that nature. It was a minor glitch and then we were off to security and the real start of the journey.

Here we were welcomed to the comedy that is the security screening process. Yes, you guessed it we got in the wrong line. It was absolutely the wrong line. All of the french fry and fast food people skip the employee only line to break in front of our line. Did I mention that this was really annoying, Yes, it was really annoying.

We finally made it through the line and out to the gate. It is now time to sit and wait for the flight. Just enough time to call each of the Godparents and chat for a moment and get a drink.

The flight to New Orleans was uneventful. We were seated two together in a row of two. We landed and found that the next flight was right at the next gate. So I went off in search of some food as we were famished. We had a quick airport priced meal (all of other illusions to cost removed by MaMa) which did taste good.

The flight to LA was also uneventful. We tried to sleep as much as possible and still watch Spiderman 3. It is not the best of the movies. No problems with the landing and then the walk to the International Terminal. We passed one line where there was 3 million (seemed that way) people queued up outside the door. Fortunately we found out from 3 rude security guards that this was not our queue for tickets on China Southern.

We arrived at the China Southern desk and the queue was not long. So we got our seats and choose the back of the plane (last row of the plane), but it was where the eats narrowed to two seats. It was a long, long, long flight and it was also hot to start with on the flight. We attempted to sleep and were fairly successful. Neither of us slept hard, but we did sleep. So we passed the night into the next night given the time change and flew off to our future.

Here are some Airport Shots for your enjoyment:

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