Take the long way home

Well here I am in warmer climes once again. I'm afraid I spent just a little too much time in airport bars on Friday and had a full schedule today so posting has been lighter than expected this weekend. The trip however, despite the rocky start, went surprisingly well.

I had to get to the airport three hours early on account of the shuttle. They changed their schedule since the last time I used the service. So anyway, I'm sitting at the bar at Bradley looking at a three hour wait and the guy next to me mentions he's on a flight at 4:45 to Balti and I should try to get on it. I'm thinking it probably won't do much good because I still have a late connection but I decide to stroll over at ten minutes before the flight leaves and check it out anyway.

Turns out the flight was pretty empty because of the hurricane cancellations and there was also an earlier connection I had a slight chance of making so I decided to go for it. What the heck, Balti is a more interesting airport to be stuck in anyway. I almost didn't make it on the plane because the computers went down and the desk clerk couldn't change my ticket. So I'm watching the people board thinking that maybe it just wasn't meant to be but darned if it didn't finally go through right at the last possible moment and I waltzed on with seconds to spare. And who do I end up sitting next to but the guy from the bar.

He turned out to be way interesting. Descended from pirates that settled in Barbados -- in fact his ancestor was third mate to the Captain Morgan they named the rum after -- and he owns a software company that provides a platform for political polling. Not the kind you see in local paper but the kind the campaigns use to decide how to target the voters. Then our gates were close together on the next leg also so we ended up sitting next to each other at the bar in Balti as well. Very cosmic.

Meanwhile the earlier flight out of Balti I want to get on is booked solid but I'm number two on the wait list and once again waltzed onto the flight, the third to last person on the plane. This one was so full I had to stow my bag under the seat but I had another interesting seatmate. This guy was on his way to a dog show, his pup was in it, but the really interesting part was that he makes his living as a lobbyist for the oil industry. We had a great conversation about politics as well. He was surprising liberal, definitely not going to vote for Bush either. This is why I love Southwest airlines.