Thursday I took off work a few hours early so I could catch my flight home!! I took my backpack and my tote bag with me to work and even impressed a few of the ladies there that I could fit all my things for the weekend! From the hospital, all I had to do was walk two blocks to find the train station. I bought my ticket and waited for the R1 train outbound to the airport.
When the R1 arrived, I hopped on with my luggage and was surprised to find out that the train delivered me directly to the terminal at the airport! How fantastic is that?! I had allotted myself plenty of time due to that schedule of the train, so when I arrived at the airport I had plenty of time to look around and determine where I needed to be.
While I was waiting for my plane to arrive, I ended up chatting with a mother and daughter who were sitting next to me. I had noticed that the daughter had put on a sweatshirt and from what I could tell, it appeared to say “Sacred Heart.” So of course, I was intrigued! I made a quick comment about it and come to find out, the daughter had just graduated from high school only an hour or so before and was traveling to a crew regatta championship in Cincinnati (which is the same airport I was headed to). So we had a nice little chat and it appeared that the daughter was super friendly and started chatting to me as if we were best of friends. It was kind of nice talking with someone who was graduating from high school, when I had just missed my 5 year high school reunion. Overall, this was a refreshing moment.
When the plane arrived, I boarded the plane and met my seat buddy. Yet again, I ended up starting into a conversation with the lady sitting next to me and ended up having a nice little time conversing with her.
It seemed like such a short flight and we were landing in Cincinnati. I think I was also preoccupied with the thought that Josh was the one to come and pick me up from the airport (although I had to wait for him to come from his night class). I took advantage of the time and busted open my PT board exam book that I brought along with me.
Josh arrived to pick me up and we headed on our way back to Louisville. The rest of the weekend we were headed out to the lake for my dad’s 50th birthday celebration. He had been planning this party for months and was expecting close to 70 people.
We had a fantastic weekend, one that I wish would have never ended. But sadly, all good things must come to an end. Before I knew it, it was already Sunday and time for Josh to take me back to the airport.
Once we finally arrived to the airport, I felt like I was “go-go-go” from then on. While I was home, I ended up packing another rolling bag to take with me. So now I needed to check in at the little kiosk and they made me check my bag too. I got distracted by the receipt for the bag, that I forgot to pick up my boarding pass at this time. Without knowing it, I had started for the security check point (which seemed poorly organized and forever long of a line). I was standing in line for close to 10 minutes when I started to approach the security officer and realized I needed to pull out my boarding pass. Well, when I attempted to do so, I realized that I only had the receipt and chances are I would not be allowed through security without my boarding pass. So I now had to jump out of line (which seemed longer at this point) and rush over to the kiosk in hopes that my boarding pass would still be there. Thankfully, my pass was still there and now I was headed to the security line to start all over.
Upon arriving at the x-ray scanner and metal detector, I saw the sign mentioning liquids needing to be outside of the bags. At this point, I realized that I had not encountered any problem going through Philadelphia security, but hoped that maybe I wouldn’t encounter problems again. BOY was I wrong!! The officer that pulled my bag aside was very unkind and very frank. I tried to be very polite and willing to participate with the security officer, but he did not seem of interest to reciprocate the gesture. He was very rude and of course, I tried very hard not to take it personally because he was just doing his job, but it would have been more fantastic if he did his job with a smile. :-)
So after getting through the awkwardness of going through security, I finally arrived at my crowded gate with about 5 minutes until boarding time. The terminal was extremely overcrowded and I stood patiently awaiting for the boarding time. It was then that they announced that due to bad weather in Philadelphia, we were not going to be taking off the ground for another hour. Well, I suppose this allowed me some time to go grab some food since I was already hungry.
I ate my lunch and opened up my 7th Harry Potter book that I brought along with me and had some personal time. When it came time to boarding, I softly took my seat and opened up my book again since we still had plenty of time before take off. I continued to read my book throughout the flight and once we landed, we encountered another surprise. We were told that we had beaten the storm to the airport, but…the walkway was not taxied out to the plane – so we needed to wait out the storm on the ground.
By the time the weather ended, I headed to baggage claim and went to find my train out of the airport. To get home, I had a decent trek to include the airport train to 30th street train station, then walk across the street to the subway/trolleys, hop on to the trolley and then walk two blocks to my place. All in all, this does not seem like a bad walk, but when I had three bags, I had definitely worked up a sweat.
By the time I was home….I was exhausted and relieved to be “home” for I no longer was traveling. All in all, I had a very eventful weekend and got to experience traveling solo, which is something I had not done before. Boy, was this an adventure!!
Thanks for riding along.
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