Commercial Flight to Huntsville AL

Yesterday, Jim took me to time out of his day (thanks a bunch, Jim!) to take me to the airport in time to catch my 1145 a.m. American Airlines flight. The flight to Dallas/Fort Worth was uneventful with scenery of the snowy Rockies beneath the wings as we crossed the Continental Divide somewhere around Denver.

When we landed at DFW, besides having to taxi half-way across Texas (it seemed) to get from the landing strip to the terminal, when we got there, our gate wasn't ready so we had to sit on the tarmac for about ten minutes waiting for another airplane to leave so we could take its place. All the while, Grumpy is sitting there nourishing his starving stomach with fingernails as my connecting flight was scheduled to leave from another gate on the far side of another terminal!

Finally getting at the gate, now Grumpy (who was cleverly seated near the rear of the not-so-super 80 -- an old MacDac airplane) had to wait while a hundred passengers got up, slowly pulled their carry-ons out of the overhead bins and ambled up the long narrow aisle to the front of the airplane.

I finally got into the terminal with 15 minutes to get myself and my carry-ons to the far gate. I wandered until I found the "QuickLink", an automated tram that carries people from one end of the four terminals to the other, and in another two minutes was at my gate -- five minutes to spare.

My seat (29F), reserved for a month or more, was in the rear of the super 80. When the engines revved up, the noise almost drilled out my eardrums! (Memo to self: after this, make sure to ask for a seat no further back than row 25 on a Super 80.

Anyway, I arrived on time in Huntsville, Unxcle Bob was there to meet me and Inisia and Larry Holland (our hosts in Huntsville) had a gourmet meal prepared for us when we arrived at the Holland mansion.

Today promises to be more excitement as I visit the Radiation Lab and we go see the Mooney. More of that in the next post.