2 down, 2 to go

After three hours of sleep each night for the past few nights, I woke up this morning and drove to the Ft. Lauderdale airport for a 10 am flight. That flight was my first of four. Using frequent flyer miles I booked a first class flight to Cincinnati. Why Cincinnati? Good question. Apparently when you use miles to pay for your trip, they have you by the cojones and dictate the direction you fly... which in my case is in circles.

First class was nice. I sat next to a stone-wall of a man who looked up from his laptop for about 10 minutes the whole flight. Which becomes even weirder when you realize for the first and last 20 minutes of the flight, the cpu wasn't even on. The seat was large, the food was good, the flight attendants were fine - not a big deal.

I landed in Cincinnati and quickly visited a borders bookstore in the airport to find out where the hell Ohio was. I learned it was south of Michigan. Then I found out that I wasn't even in Ohio, because the Cincinnati airport, in fact, is in Kentucky. I sat outside gate c-9 for three hours and then, 25 minutes before takeoff realized that in the interim my gate had changed, but made it with no problem. Also, during my stint in “Ohio” I received a number of crooked looks directed at my gator national championship game shirt. One cop actually said gators had no shot. If I knew anything about sports I would have made some obnoxious comment about Ohio state almost losing to some bad team… but a) I do not know about sports, and b) he was a cop and I had three more planes to catch.

Next flight (flight # 2) was also uneventful (which is a good thing). I sat in the last row (row # 11) of a tiny "regional" jet. At least this time the dude next to me was nice. He was from London, Canada. We discussed global warming, the 7 to go plates of food he and his wife had (still don't totally understand why) and his recent ski trip.

As I type this, I am now in the Northwest world club room. This room is swank. Very, very swank. Open bar, servers, free food and people glaring at me like I don't belong. In fact, I barely belong. I am allowed to be here only because I am flying "world business" class. This is what I would call the upper class, as Northwest only has 2 classes now. Anyway, I have a few more hours before my trip to Paris. I fully intend on narcing (rhymes with barking) and sleeping so I can enjoy my Paris days. I've taken a few pictures of the clouds, but am not taking the time now to post.

Go Gators.