Don't worry, I made it. But let me assure you, I could have spent another few hours sleeping in the hotel and been okay with it, except I wouldn't have got to experience St. Louis with the family (more on that later).
My first plane, from OKC to Chicago, was the tiniest thing ever. It was so lame that it didn't even have SkyMall.
I have never been one who just loved flying, but I figured it was time to suck it up and be a grown up. So I took seat 7A and attempted to make conversation with the gentleman next to me. At first I thought he was being rude and ignoring me... then I realized he was reading a book in Chinese (they read back to front - it blew my mind) and literally couldn't understand me. So he got a pass. Instead, I turned my attention to the safety manual (obvi, need to be prepared) until it was time to safely turn on my electronic devices, at which point I watched Leap Year on my wonderful iPad until we landed.
Like I said earlier, we had to exit on the ground and walk into the airport.
Once I finished running to keep up with everyone, I found a place to plug in my phone, thinking I would be there for thirty minutes, catch my plane, and be in St. Louis. Instead, this nice little area ended up being my home for the next 5-ish hours.
Take note: when you're bored in the airport that doesn't offer free WiFi (LAME) - just buy it for $7. Because if you don't, and you decide to just use your phone as a hot spot for your iPad for those hours, you will use 5GB of data and get a sad message from tMobile letting you know you've gone over your data usage limit (I used have an unlimited plan so I'm not sure how that can even happen) and your speeds will be greatly reduced for the rest of the billing cycle. And if you're like me, this will be the first day of the billing cycle. And then your internet will stink and you will want to cry because you're in a foreign (ish) city all alone with terrible internet. Anyway.
Like I said, I had a great experience at the hotel, despite the key issue. When I did finally get to my room, I was expecting a tiny room with two questionable looking beds and a sketchy bathroom. This is an airport hotel, people, the standards are pretty low. (I'm thinking of the one we stayed at in Arizona, when I was convinced I was going to wake up dead but I was brave anyway and slept by the window.) Surprisingly, this one was quite nice for the $119 I paid.
It even had two windows (one in each room)...of course, one view included the always-lovely McDonalds. Sick!!!
I did take a picture of me to see what I looked like when I finally got to the hotel...and I'm not sharing it. haha. It had been a long day, and all I wanted was a shower and a bed. So when I did get to bed, I turned on Food Network (I was not about to sleep in a big, empty, quiet hotel room alone.) and didn't move until 3:45am. Such great sleep. #not
Regardless, I got a cup of nasty coffee and made it to the airport by 4:30, caught my mostly-uneventful flight (minus a rude flight attendant.) and landed in St. Louis in time to eat breakfast at the hotel with my family. And that made it all worthwhile.
PS - Happy 4th of July - go celebrate freedom!
[...] I am becoming a professional air traveler. Except maybe not. At any rate, I made a trip to Austin last week for work. I only took one Texas-y picture the [...]
ReplyDelete