Little Mr Sunshine (state)

Paul,

Returning from my first out of DC meeting turned out to be a bit more difficult than I thought. Mind you getting there was just as tough!

....Dateline Sunday....Paul is due to fly at 12 noon...Airport closed....flight understandably cancelled.... I had no issues with this and spent the day with Sof and watched the Superbowl at some locals house. You already know that! The flight out on Monday was relatively uneventful apart from some spectacular turbulence over Georgia..bugger! Trying to get to my hotel also quite easy apart from the GPS locating the satellite immediately after had made the wrong turn on to the highway in the opposite direction. Added about 20 mins to the journey so not too catastrophic. The hotel seemed to be quite biz are really. Separate spurs containing ten rooms right next to a beach! Cocoa beach in fact! The meeting itself was pretty decent, picked up some decent pointers on what I actually do here.

The best bit had to be watching the Atlas rocket launch. Our meeting was particularly close to the launch area up at Cape Canaveral so we got some people to keep an eye on the launch countdown on their phones and all ran out to watch the take off when it actually happened. Blimey it was great, the shape of the rocket was clearly visible...cracking.

The return was slightly more problematic. Getting to he airport after another huge snow dump at DC I knew the chances of not getting back home were quite high. However, the airline kept telling me that it was on time and despite an earlier flight having a delay mine was on target to leave. Arriving at the gate after check in I saw the delayed flight take off so I knew that I could at least land at the airport...things were looking quite sunny. But I hadn't counted on fate!

It appeared that snow was not my problem this time. "Mechanical problems in the cockpit", not words you really want to hear where planes are concerned (in my opinion up there with "wings a bit loose"). The panic set in as the poor airline guy had to announce the flight being cancelled. All the people who had been stranded at Orlando whilst the snow had blockaded DC could see another night in Florida on the horizon. This time it wasn't an act of god keeping them in country but the airplane being unable to fly. So we got $10 for an evening meal, $5 for breakfast and a free night at a hotel (incidentally much nicer than my hotel for the previous few days).

Getting a new flight seemed quite easy too. As soon as the cancellation was called I called up US Airways and re booked on to the first flight the following morning (7.20am). Unfortunately they had no courtesy buses free at the hotel near my flight time so I had 4 hours sleep at the hotel before having to catch the bus at 4:30 to the airport. Landed....did a full days work....drove home in massive traffic jam....16 hour working day....never again.

Seems that the gods are against me being lucky in travel.

Still Becca, Dave , Georgia , Daisy here now and Sof happy I'm back. all is right with the world. Sof off to Canada on Tuesday so I am keeping the home fires burning. She is only doing it to spite me I know but I think I will probably beat her for time on travel over the 3 year span out here.

Toodle pip