The morning of September 9th 2011, I had an early flight to New York. Getting up at 4:45 AM is not something I look forward to with delight, but you do what you gotta do. I stayed the night at Mom and Dad’s house so that it was easier for them to bring me to the airport.
I arrived at the airport around 5:30 AM, checked in and headed to security. After getting in the shortest and apparently slowest line it was my turn to walk through the metal detectors. No, they didn’t go off, but a little box beeped signaling that I was selected for random screening . . . great. They took me aside and wiped my hands with a cloth and put it in a machine, apparently looking for evidence of me making bombs or maybe drugs. After finding nothing I started getting my things ready to head to my gate when I hear “CODE 5! NOBODY MOVE!” and security guards and everyone else stop, and it is silent as we wait. As we are days away from the 10th anniversary of 9/11, security is heightened and on edge. After a few minutes they give an all clear and we can continue on our way . . . GOOD MORNING!
As I get to my seat of the plane I realize the guy next to me is not a believer in deodorant . . . great, this next 5 hours is going to be fun! I’m secretly hoping that the person who is supposed to be sitting in the window seat next to me will miss the flight so I can have a little more breathing room . . . but no such luck. As we prepare for takeoff 3 final people rush on the plane . . . it’s Carl, Susan and Taddeus Sundqvist.
My flight takes off on time and there is nothing much to do for the next 5 hours. Even though we have the individual TV screens in the seat back in front of us, it costs $6 per movie or TV show you want to watch. So I tried out my new MP3 player and listed to Tina Fey’s Audio Book Bossypants.
As the captain announces that we will be descending into New York I’m thinking that I should go to the bathroom, but as we should be on the ground soon I decided to wait till I’m in the airport. Our flight lands 15 minutes early and there is no open gate for us, so we sit on the tarmac. After we have been sitting on the ground for 20 minutes I ask a flight attendant if I can use the restroom, she tells me I cannot because if I’m in the bathroom and they get the okay to move they will have to wait till I return to my seat. After another 15 minutes we finally get moving to our gate. By the time we get off the plane we are officially a half hour late!
After finding a bathroom I head down to baggage claim where Nathan is waiting for me. After a hug and a kiss I say “You’ll never guess who was on my flight!” and he says “Tracy Berry” (she is a local news anchor in Portland) “Well yes actually, how did you know that?” I said. Apparently he had been talking to some lady in baggage claim who was on my same flight as me.
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| The New York Skyline |
Nate decides we are going to go a different way up to Connecticut then the way he came down, as traffic was really bad. Unfortunately the other way wasn’t much better. We headed into downtown Norwalk to find something to eat before heading to the hotel. We settled on Bella Pasta which was quite good.
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