Arizona trip 2 of 4

I'm sitting at the airport, waiting to leave for my second of 4 trips to Phoenix before Thanksgiving. Usually Beth goes with me, but this is a quick trip - back fast enough that I've already checked in for my return flight. It also kicks of my mega-travel fall - out of town for all or part of six straight weekends. Two Phoenix, one coastal cruise, a trip to NY spanning two, and the San Francisco 3-day. I'm looking forward to Halloween at home.

Arizona this time is for a crew meeting. We felt it was important that one of us go (as crew captains) and today is Becky's birthday, so I go. I think this is the first time I've flown on September 11.

So far, flight is on time. More later from the end of the trip.

----------------------------------------

The meeting on the 12 went well. The flight home - not so much. I get to the airport about an hour and a half before my flight. It's going to be two hours late - so much for my dance lesson. But wait, there's a flight leaving in 20 minutes. Maybe I can get on that. Run throough security. No gate information. Turns out it's on US Air in another terminal. So much for that. In the meantime my flight is canceled. What then happened was about 35 minutes of trying to get home. At one point, it was through Denver. Only about 1500 miles out of the way. While the agent was calling US air, I was on the phone with United and they were telling me I could get on a 4pm on US air direct to San Francisco. The agent was saying that she called, and there were no more seats.

Finally, she told me to run to gate 3 and they'd put me on a flight to LA. From there, getting home is easy. That flight was about 15 minutes late, but that was OK - I had a 3 hour layover. Got to the airport, and found I'd just missed a flight. However, my flight was at 8:15 and there was a 6:20. I was able to go standby on that, and was home at about 8. Did I mention that my day started at 6 am? It was exhausting but other than getting home a good weekend.