There and back again: a tale by TranquillicFlow

It was 12 days before New Years Day, the day I set off to visit relatives on the West Coast. The flight out to SFO was uneventful, though little did I know the return trip proved otherwise.

Before we went up to Sacramento, we visited the Golden Gate Bridge. The place at the south end of the Bridge wasn't all that interesting, though the drive across the Bridge and the view from Hawk Hill at the north end made it worthwhile. It was a sunny day and the red suspension bridge and the shiny city of San Francisco were in clear view.


We drove up to Sacramento the Saturday before Christmas to visit other relatives. A place we visited while in Sacramento was the California State Capitol. Too bad the Governator (Arnold) fractured his leg while skiing so we didn't get to see him there.


After getting back to the Bay area, we went to The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose. It's a good place for kids to learn about technology hands on. We also visited the Cantor Center for the Visual Arts at Stanford. It really is a place for art enthusiasts.

Besides museums, we also drove down to Andrew Molera State Park and Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park near Big Sur. They're both great places to visit.

A view inside Andrew Molera State Park

A view at Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park

Another view at Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park

Then it was Friday before New Years and it's time to head back to North Carolina. The day started with a delay at SFO. I didn't think much of it at the time, but that started a chain of events that completely threw my return trip out of whack.

Not only did the flight take off more than an hour late, when we got near Dallas, the weather was so bad that we had to divert to Midland. We sat on the tarmac at the Midland airport for hours, then finally the weather cleared up enough for us to fly back to Dallas. By the time we landed in Dallas, it was past 9pm local time, and many flights, along with mine, were cancelled.

After a long wait to get to a counter, in order for me to get back to NC on Saturday, I had to go through New York. Normally, it would have been a direct flight back to RDU. Considering that the alternative is to camp out at DFW for two nights, I settled for that extra connection through New York. The flight leaves around 11am Saturday, so now I have more than 12 hours to kill at DFW.

In the past, I find those TV news reports at the airports to be quite useful. It was from one of those news reports at the Detroit airport that I found out the UNC men's basketball team won the NCAA Championship in 2005. This time, however, was a much different story.

Maybe it's because this turned into a 12+ hour layover, the news reports kept repeating the same news over and over, it got a bit annoying. When everywhere you turn, you see the TV screen showing Saddam's hanging over and over and over, what you thought to be a nice thing becomes just useless. I'm glad I didn't choose to stay at DFW for two nights. The rest of the trip went as expected and I finally got home Saturday night, a day later than planned. At least I didn't spend New Years watching replays of Saddam's demise.

What else is going on (from www.spaceflightnow.com)?
The Delta 4-Heavy prep for April launch. I thought the launch was late this month. Why the delay?
Definitive evidence of the presence of lakes filled with liquid methane on Saturn's moon Titan. A Titan surface mission is looking more and more interesting.

IDWP