Delta

Flying High Again….

rmiles7721February 22, 20082Travel

This is why I don’t like to fly. I know in theory that it’s safer than being in a car but take my manager that was in a car wreck two weeks ago. She was hit head-on by what they think might have been a drunk driver. The toxicology tests haven’t come back yet, so it’s entirely possible that he wasn’t drunk. Anyway, it completely destroyed both vehicles. He’s in a neck brace and may lose a leg. She had a compound fracture of one leg and broke the other in eight places, busted up her pelvis and punctured her spleen. She had at least two surgeries that I know of. It will be twelve weeks before she can even put any pressure on her leg and start some kind of physical therapy, probably the end of the summer before she could even consider working again, and even that will most likely only be for short periods of time. Her three kids were in the car as well but they are OK. She was very lucky.

Two planes hit head-on, there ain’t no OK, jack. You’re screwed. At least if I am in a car accident I am a bit closer to the ground.

American Airlines flight 862 was heading from West Palm Beach to Chicago and was diverted to Miami with nose gear trouble. They were lucky it was caught so early in the flight.


The flight back to Atlanta from Nassau on this past Sunday was really ugly.

The plane arrived in Nassau early on Sunday and the crew had it ready to go 25 minutes before scheduled departure. We were getting ready to take off when they figured out that someone with Delta had filed the wrong paperwork with customs and listed the crew and pilot completely wrong. They had to re-file the corrected paperwork with customs, so we left late after sitting there for 40 minutes. What sucked about it is that although all over the Bahamas you can smoke in places it’s not welcome in the U.S., there is no place in the Nassau airport to smoke. I have cut down, but sitting in the airport for two hours prior to the flight without nicotine had me somewhat jumpy.

The flight to Atlanta was pretty uneventful, almost peaceful. It was really cool (both flights) watching the coastline recede into the distance. If not for nasty weather I could probably get used to flying.

Anyway, Atlanta had some really ugly weather Sunday afternoon. Tornadoes in East Point, which is somewhat near the airport. Wind gusts of 25 mph, heavy thunder storms, that kind of stuff. We had made up quite a bit of time, but had we made it 40 minutes early like we would have if Delta hadn’t screwed up our paperwork we would have missed the storms and probably landed. As it is, they had a bunch of planes circling Atlanta.

We circled and circled for an hour or so and then the pilot came on to let us know we didn’t have enough gas to keep circling (this made me feel great) and we were being diverted to Augusta. It’s less than a thirty minute flight, so we got there safely and landed. Only problem is, they wouldn’t let us off the plane since we were an international flight. Forget the fact that we had already cleared TSA and customs prior to leaving Nassau and when we got to Atlanta we could get in the car to leave. For whatever fucking reasons you can’t get off the plane in an unscheduled landing. Either that or they don’t let international flights into Augusta normally. It was a pretty tiny airport. There were 10 other flights that had been diverted to Augusta as well.

We sat there until eight or so, finally got fueled up and returned to Atlanta in the flight that seemed to last forever. It was closer to an hour returning because the were going up and down and around the individual storm cells. Hell, until the captain announced what he was doing I thought we were in the worst of it. White knuckle stuff there for this big chicken.

Obviously we made it back OK. It’s not Delta’s fault that the storms were around Atlanta but it certainly is there fault that they filed the wrong paperwork in the Bahamas, so I am pretty pissed off at Delta for turning my two hour flight into one that lasted seven and a half hours. What did Delta have to say? Thanks for flying and hope you fly with us again.

bwahahaha.

You know what the sad thing is?

I probably will.

fuck.

Friday in the Bahamas

rmiles7721February 19, 2008Photography, Travel

The trip down to Nassau was fantastic! Just what I needed but not nearly long enough. That combined with the nasty plane ride home was enough to slightly tarnish the trip. Oh yeah, and I’ve been fucking cold ever since I got home.

We dropped the girls off early at school on Friday morning so we could get down to the airport. The drive down wasn’t too terribly bad, we managed to get in the airport at around 7:30 Friday morning. It was actually very crowded and we had to wait through the line at security forever. Once we made it through the obligatory cavity search and managed to get to the gate I took one of the Xanax and settled down to wait for the plane. The ride down was pretty uneventful and I actually enjoyed it once we had been in the air for awhile. The Xanax didn’t do shit to calm me down but I seem to be getting a little better at flying. At least I thought so until the flight home.

The airport in Nassau looks like it was built around the time that JFK was hanging out in the Bahamas although they seem to be trying to update it. We had to wait awhile to get through customs but we did have these guys hanging out playing the entire time.

Nassau, Bahamas 002

Can’t help the graininess of the shot. I was afraid one of the security guys was going to stomp my ass if I turned the flash on.

Anyway, once we made it through security and out into the general terminal, Breezes has a booth there that directed us to a shuttle bus. They provide transportation to and from the resort as part of the deal.

I really regret not renting a car or scooter while we were there. The caves where the pirates used to hide their shit and the villas all along the coast were truly a site to see and I would have liked to stop and take more photos than I did. We spent an inordinant amount of time either walking or riding the bus and while it’s nice to let someone else do the driving, perhaps a taxi would be the best bet. A tad bit more expensive but at least they will stop when I want them to.

We got to the resort around noon and check-in isn’t until 3 so they stuck armbands on us and let us roam around to check the place out until we could get our room. We tried their native brewed, called Kalik. It pretty much sucked. If you like Budweiser with a higher alcohol content and more carbonation you might like Kalik. It was probably closer to Corona than Bud but it was still crappy piss water. I much prefer Sam Adams and Guinness as well as other dark, full beers. They also had serve-yourself daiquiri dispensers there so I settled on Pina Coladas. I didn’t drink much on this trip anyway. I wanted to make sure and enjoy the island in my own self-created stupor without adding too much alcohol to the mix. The water was too cool to get in, either the ocean or the pool, so we just sort of hung out. It was pretty overcast when we arrived and it had started drizzling shortly after we got there. You can see the rain arriving in this photo.

Nassau, Bahamas 004

Normally you can see clearly to Long Cay and to the right the coastline as well, that’s rain coming. It never did rain very hard unless it was while we were napping, which we did shortly after we finally got our room, which was closer to four rather than the three p.m. check-in time. It was actually starting to get pretty fucking irritating that they didn’t have the room ready. I think we were both crabby and tired.

After a nice nap we checked the place out some more and then had dinner. There are a couple of different restaurants in the joint as well as the buffet. We chose the buffet and the fare was actually pretty decent. Nothing to write home about but I certainly had my fill. We made a trip to the Crystal Palace Casino right down the street where the wife won $100 on the slots. Some of that was profit 🙂

After the Casino we hung out on the beach for awhile where they were doing a circus show. Two of the four acrobats couldn’t be there so it was OK, but nothing fantastic. After that we just hit the sack. Flying screws with my ears and we were both tired.

I will post more pictures and more about the trip later this evening. I’ve got a bit of house cleaning to take care of and then I have some work to do this evening as well. I have posted most of the pictures to my Flickr page if you want to see them before I post them here.