The Saga Continues: Sleeping (well, attempting to) in Salt Lake City, Safe but Sleep-deprived in Seattle

I left Northern Virginia yesterday afternoon for Washington Reagan “National” Airport, a MUCH better airport to fly out of than Dulles in Northern VA. It moves very smoothly, there are no buses to take from the main terminal to the gates, (luggage generally arrives less than an hour after landing, unlike at Dulles), and we boarded on time without problem. However, we ended up sitting on the tarmac for over 2 hours because of some traffic control problems. It wasn’t clear to us where (or why) these actually were (we were to fly from DCA to JFK in New York), but the pilot kept announcing, multiple times, that it would be “15-20 more minutes”…. At one point, he said something about airport officials having shut down the entire DC-NY corridor. Who knows. In any case, people were starting to get anxious due to the fact that most everyone had connecting flights—we were on one of those small “connector flight” planes. They didn’t return to the gate because that would have compromised our “place in line” for takeoff and thus the time ticked by as people missed their flights... but there was nothing we could do.

We ended up leaving about 2 hours and 15 minutes after our scheduled departure time and ended up in NY about an hour later. When taking into account the airport wait time, runway wait time, flight time, etc., we might have been able to drive the 250 miles to New York in a shorter amount of time than this whole flight saga took! In any case, I missed my connecting flight to Seattle by about 40 minutes and then joined the line of the other disgruntled customers to get rebooked. There were no more flights that evening directly out to Seattle, but there was one that left in the next ½ hour that got me to Salt Lake. I’d then have to wait overnight there for an early morning flight to Seattle, but my choices were: a) sleeping in JFK or b) sleeping in Salt Lake City. I somehow reasoned that I’d be a) closer to Seattle if any more haywire went on if I made it to Salt Lake and b) SLC airport was likely to be much nicer than JFK for potential sleeping :) So onto Salt Lake it was! Laura wonders why my travel always gets messed up. Am I an unlucky person? Am I cursed? Or is it just that, the more one travels, the more opportunities there are for stuff to get messed up? I’ve taken a LOT of flights in the last month and am getting quite sick of flying and living in airports. But I guess it has been worth it, right? :)

Anyway, last night I did two things I have never done before in my life. The first was that I ordered an alcoholic beverage (my new favorite drink, the mojito) on the flight from JFK to SLC. I don’t quite know why I did this (I never spend money on airplanes). But I was not feeling so “up” and just felt like it. Rather than lifting my spirits, however, it pretty much just snowed me and I missed the second half of Little Miss Sunshine, the in-flight feature presentation that I started watching (and wanted to finish based on my sister’s recommendation!). Not even the lots of little children (we were flying to the Mormon state, remember!) on the flight chattering, crying, etc. kept me up.

I got into SLC around 11 p.m. mountain time and was still so, so exhausted. I think that, when I landed, the Delta representative greeting our flight said something to me about riding a shuttle to a nearby hotel, but I was too out of it to even comprehend finding a shuttle to go outside the airport and just wanted to lay my head down. So came my second “first” of the evening. I spent the night trying to get comfortable on these REALLY UNCOMFORTABLE seats near Delta’s E gates, sleeping at an airport. I almost slept at the Minneapolis airport a few weeks ago because I wasn’t sure it was worth it to drive back to Roch for a night, but I didn’t. And am certainly glad for that. Sleeping in airports is not fun.

I think I may have strained some neck muscles last night! With the constant canned announcements, lights on, vacuuming, etc., I don’t think I got more than a few hours of “light rest” in. I do NOT recommend sleeping in airports. I should have probably moved to the floor—I may have been more comfortable there. But I do think that it was nicer there than it would have been at JFK. And at least it saved me time in the morning to not have to go through security again! Salt Lake City is actually one of those places I really wanted to visit. And I’m not sure that I can add Utah to the list-of-states-I’ve-been-to since I didn’t actually set foot in the state except to board the mini-aircraft out (my godparents say airports don’t count—they, though, count countries and not states but the principle is the same). But at least, having been there once, I know the airport is nice and if I end up out west, it would be easy to go back.

So I took an 8:00 a.m. flight to Seattle. My checked bag did not make it, but I didn’t expect it to with my strange and somewhat rushed connection in JFK. I picked up the rental car and then drove to the house of the Petkuses in Bellevue, a suburb of Seattle. They were a family mine met while in Mexico who offered to house me as long as I needed a place to stay/was in the Seattle area. Funny how things work out like that! I've been trying to sleep but, although I'm exhausted, I can't. I can't seem to relax and so yes, I know it's trite, but I am indeed sleepless (and sleep-deprived) in Seattle. Having some foresight (and knowing my recent luck!), I had packed changes of clothes and interview stuff in a carry-on. But they told me my bag was on a later flight out here today, so I may call in a bit to see if it's ok to go pick it up at the airport (otherwise they said they wouldn't be able to drop it off until tomorrow afternoon).

A piece of good news: I only have ONE MORE FLIGHT (and it happens to be a direct one to Minneapolis) to get through this interview journey. Woo-hoo.

I go to a resident dinner tonight and then interview at Valley Medical Center in Renton, WA tomorrow. I wonder if that will go more smoothly than has my recent travel :).