SBA to LAX to MIA to JAX…JAX to ORD to SFO to SBA!

This Thanksgiving I took my first trek to Georgia to visit my brother before he is deployed this coming Friday.  I had a GREAT time with my family, which made the 2 days of traveling to get there and back totally worth it.

In case you have any upcoming holiday travel plans, here are some of the airport highlights…and LOWlights I came across in my coast-to-coast travels:

• If you ever have the chance, fly through SBA!  It is, by far, my favorite because it is the easiest airport that I’ve ever flown in and out of!  It took me a whopping 5 minutes to check my bag (I had already printed my boarding pass and paid my $20 baggage fee online), go through security, and take a seat at the gate!  How can you NOT love that?!
• I was let down that the only restaurant in my terminal at LAX was “Chili’s Too”.  Their food is simply NOT good!  I was ALSO let down that I didn’t realize that I had lost one of the gel ear buds for my Bose headphones on the plane from SBA to LAX and they don’t carry them in the airport.  Thankfully I had brought a spare set of iPhone headphones so I was able to watch some TweetDeck tutorial videos during my 2 hour layover!
• Several airports now have gadget vending machines where you can purchase things like iPods, headphones, digital cameras, gaming systems, and other gadgets and gizmos! Pretty cool but don’t expect that you’re going to get any sale prices…you’re buying it in an airport after all!
• MIA REALLY needs to do some work!  The gate I waited at for roughly four hours (as a result of a delay) stunk of mildew…to the point where I could hardly breathe!  The smell was so strong that I couldn’t even smell the Starbucks coffee brewing at the stand across the room.  Shocking, I know! Once we were finally called to board…for the second time…we were shuttled over in a bus.  I wouldn’t be surprised if it was raining harder INSIDE the bus than it was outside!  The roof was leaking all along one side, the floor was soaking wet and people were sitting in puddles of water by the time we made it over to the plane.  Somebody needs to get it together over there!
• JAX was a very nice airport and even nicer because it has free Wi-Fi throughout the airport until 1/15/10, courtesy of Google!
• I remember flying through ORD roughly 7 years ago on my way back from a month-long visit in Madrid, Spain, but one thing I didn’t see THEN was the H1N1 flu vaccination booths NOW setup throughout the airport.  I thought that was a little weird; a great idea because of all of the germs spreading around airports and airplanes but the whole idea of getting a flu shot in the airport just didn’t settle with me very easily for some reason.  Another thing that ended up not settling well with me was the pizza that I simply couldn’t resist at Wolfgang Puck’s.  I guess several hours of traveling and several months of not eating pizza can do that to somebody!
• By the time I got to SFO my iPhone battery was running very low, common I know, and one suggestion I would have for them is more electrical outlets or charging stations.  The hallways were littered with travelers sitting on the ground in order to charge up their computers, phones and any other gadgets.  I was back in California and less than an hour’s flight away from home so I couldn’t complain too much though!  Speaking of complaining, the two people next to me were awfully upset that United had overbooked our flight so much and therefore they wouldn’t be able to make it back to SBA until the next morning. I departed for home, on-time, so I was happy though!

All in all, I was quite impressed that after taking a total of six flights over the Thanksgiving weekend, only one of them was delayed!  That was the flight from MIA to JAX and was a result of weather conditions and an issue with the plane we were supposed to take and they therefore switched us to a new plane right as we were ready to board.  No complaints on my part there though, I’d rather wait and take a plane that is safe any day!  Happy Holidays everybody and safe travels!

P.S. I think that raw onions should be forbidden in airport restaurants (like they are at the Make It Work office)!  Having to sit next to a stranger for several hours that reeks of raw onions is torture!

FLOW on!

HMB

Tags: airlines, airport, coast-to-coast, free wi-fi, gadgets, highlights, holidays, iPhone, LOWlights, Starbucks, Thanksgiving, travel

This entry was posted on Monday, December 7th, 2009 at 10:33 pm and is filed under About Me. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.