I got up this morning at about 5:00 a.m. I had an 8:10 flight to catch back up to Beantown. After getting dressed and packed, I walked down to the hotel lobby. I asked the front desk to call a cab for me, to take me to the Newport News airport. A few minutes later, the cab arrived, and I headed off to the airport.
Again, the airport looked like something out of a grade “B” horror movie. Apparently, the power was still off and they were still running on the backup generators. There were a few more employees at the airport than when I had arrived less than 36 hours earlier.
As I got up to the first security desk, I asked the woman sitting there if there were any restaurants open in the gate area. She said that the only restaurant was the one about thirty feet away, well before the security screening area leading to the boarding gates. She also said that they had a small stand by the gates but the stand had no electricity, and since I had over two hours before my flight, I should grab something to eat in the restaurant.
Calling the restaurant at the Newport News airport such is a very generous use of the word. They didn’t have a grill or a cook as far as I could tell. All of the breakfast foods were stored in a small cabinet, under heat lamps of some sort. The breakfast sandwiches were pre-packaged and just heated… Hmmm…not a very good beginning to the day. I wish I could have eaten at the hotel, but unfortunately, the hotel restaurant didn’t open until six, well after I had left for the airport.
I knew I needed to get something, otherwise the flight would be unbearable—being stuck on a plane and hungry is a lot worse than just being stuck on a plane. The breakfast bagel I got seemed like it was steamed. Have you ever had a steamed bagel—they’re fairly rubbery, and not all that pleasant to eat.
After breakfast, I was off to the security screening. Fortunately, at 6:30 a.m., on a holiday weekend, there isn’t a whole lot of people at a small airport like Newport News. The new TSA regulations require every traveler to take their shoes off and have them x-rayed. They also require you to hand over all the liquids or gels in your possession. Apparently, Advil Liqui-gel caplets qualify as a liquid or a gel, so my bottle of Advil was confiscated. Fortunately, the security guard let me take some before confiscating the bottle. UGH.
Since my shoes and luggage didn’t set off the explosive sniffing machine and they passed through x-ray without problem, I was all set for my almost two-hour wait for my flight. The flight itself went rather well—we left on time, had a good tail wind, and had no screaming babies aboard the flight.
When we got to Logan, it was down to the baggage claim to see if they lost my garment bag. The luggage gods were kind, and I was able to get out to the shuttle bus for the T station fairly quickly. Home again… I hate flying.