Britain in Fall Day 1

I got an early start to my trip by getting up in the dark and walking out of my parents' house to the bus stop, where I caught the 92 express bus straight to downtown. I got off at Harrison and walked down to Stacy's hotel, where she had arranged for a towncar to whisk us off to the airport. I must say that the towncar was definitely a nice way to go.

We arrived at the airport having not arranged adjacent seat assignments ahead of time. So we found adjacent check-in terminals, found seats next to each other on all of our flights. We decided to make our way through security before the lines got any longer. We had some breakfast and chilled out a bit before embarking on our first flight of the day, to Minneapolis.

We got a good start, but the flight got bumpy as we approached MSP. Thunderstorms kept us in a holding pattern for a while, and we landed with a jolt and a bit late. Really the most annoying thing to me was a lady across the cabin who kept making weird noises during the turbulence and said "nice landing" to the first officer when deplaning. Not cool in my book. Stacy and I made a beeline for our conecting flight, luckily it was just a few gates down the concourse. Due to the aforementioned thunderstorms, that flight was slightly delayed as well, so we weren't in any serious trouble.

Luckily, the flight to Detroit was short, pleasant and smooth. And full of pilots! Since MSP and DTW are the big NWA hubs, the airline uses flights between the two to shuttle its staff around. Also, Lake Michigan is big.

The new terminal at Detroit is nice and spacious. Stacy found a quiet spot to chill while I wandered about and quenched my thirst for airport nerdery. This included riding the automated tram and going through the fancy tunnel. We had dinner before boarding our flight, and soon we were off on our way to England. The flight was okay with the unfortunate exception of the movie... "Garfield."

September 23, 2004 11:59 PM