What a long day yesterday.... We were both up at 0530, normal, to start our days. Rosie off to the hospital and me, a quick 15-20 steps to my 'office' sprawled out on our dining room table. She took off at 0630 for the hospital. I made coffee and spent most of the day tying up loose ends with my team, coordination calls and onboarding my newest hire located up in Montreal, Canada. Our flight was to depart LaGuardia (LGA) in Queens, NY, on the western most tip of Long Island at 2115 this evening.
Amazingly, Rosie left work at ~1500 and got home at 1545. This was really good because we knew we'd be leaving Long Valley (LV) in plenty of time (at least we believed at the time) to get to the airport, chill and make our Delta flight.
Departed LV at 1640 bound for LGA. Rained most of the way, heavy at times, but made great time along I-80 until about 1 mile from George Washington bridge - the crawl began! Took us about 50mins to go 50miles... the last 15miles would take 2+10!!! I haven't been in this type of traffic in ages. You figure, 'how hard or long could it take to cross a bridge, traverse the Cross Bronx, cross some other bridge and make LGA?' OMG! Seemed forever to just make it through the $12 toll booths at GW to just across the Hudson River, stop and go all the way across.
As we approached the first exit off of the bridge to the West Side, Matilda, my GPS, recommended taking that exit, exit 1, so I did. Really thought she was on to something because we initially started moving quite well. In retrospect, I don't believe meandering our way through upper Manhatten to the West side, crossing over some East River bridge onto the Major Deegan Express Way, I-87 south, just across from the new Yankee stadium, was a good idea at all... mostly because gazillions of other commuters were doing the same thing too and all this jaunt did was to loop us way south only to route us back north to the other end of Cross Bronx in heavy traffic! (Pretty sure I've linked a couple of run-on sentences here... will try to edit later! :-) ) Sure felt like we did nothing but lose more time and our patience!
Rosie and I were starting to feel a bit testy and stressed about making LGA in time. Fortunately, once we got back on to the Cross Bronx we took the Throgs Neck bridge over to the Clearview Parkway before taking the first exit, exit 6, to eventually get to the Cross Island Parkway North and LGA!
Side Note: some of you reading this and familiar with LGA and Queens may be asking yourselves why did you go over the Throgs Neck when there was a more direct way? Well, because quite frankly, I had stopped trusting Matilda, my Garmin GPS. A week ago I'd updated all of her US/Canada maps and she was displaying some routing that just wasn't looking right during this adventure to LGA so, I basically ignored her and fell back onto routes I was familiar with... perhaps I should have started listening to her directions once we got off of Manhatten. :-)
Needless to say, once we got to LGA, Rosie and I were feeling a bit rushed after this nearly 3hr drive to go 63miles!! Time on the airport premises: 1930. So, inside the 2hr be on site time but, still not too bad. Once again, not trusting Matilda, I skip the first available exit to access LGA and drive a couple miles beyond to take the last exit, exit 5, to get on the airport property.
I'm unusually disoriented at the moment. It's rainy, gray, never been to this airport before and, did not do enough pre-flight prep/study of LGA before leaving home. So, we end up parking in daily parking (read: expensive... didn't know it at the time), on the wrong end of the airport, right by the Delta Shuttle terminal. We're really starting to feel pressed for time now because we have no clue where we should be and what the check-in/security process at LGA is like.
We started wandering around a bit and asking anyone that looked like they worked there for advice/directions. Eventually, we walk up to a couple of Delta pilots and Rosie asks one of them where the normal Delta terminal is. He cordially tells us, Terminal D, on the opposite end of the airport and that we can take the 'A' bus to that terminal.
So, I'm in a bit of a conundrum: run back to our car and drive it to Terminal D or wait for and take the bus to the terminal? Decided on the bus because of our unfamiliarity with the airport and how late it was getting to boarding time. We didn't feel good about this because of the fleecing we knew we'd get with leaving our car in daily parking by the wrong terminal. Oh well, waddaya gonna do? :-)
Got to Terminal D OK, jumped out of the bus, took the escalator up to the ticketing level and headed to the Delta ticketing line to check-in our 1 piece of luggage. The line, initially, looked quite long and slow moving - we were not happy - until we noticed that all of these travellers were not in the drop off a bag line but, the check-in line. Easy breezy from then on! Security was a relative breeze and our gate, Gate 5A, was a very close stroll away.
Our part of the terminal was packed with folks all either waiting on delayed flights or just making the best of cancelled flights all due to the stormy weather in the tri-state area. LGA is a giant Delta Airlines hub and they've invested alot of money into improving/ upgrading the section of the terminal we were in. Everywhere you looked in this concourse, there were complimentary iPads all over the place for people travellling to stay connected, surf the web, play games, whatever in addition to long working surfaces with power outlets to connect personal laptops to. Quite a modern twist to airport terminal digs.
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| Just waiting for flight news at Gate 5A in LGA |
Made our way over to Gate 5A and found some seats. Not too long after sitting down, I got a call from Delta and an alert on FlightAware that our flight, 6131 to Columbia, had been delayed until at least 2210... time was about 2000. So, with 2 hours to takeoff, I decided to run back out of the terminal, catch a taxi back to the Delta Shuttle area, Terminal A, to go retrieve our car! Another first for me on this day.
So, one short $11 taxi ride later ($9 + tip), a $9 parking tab in the wrong parking lot, I was back parking in P5 next to Terminal D and walking back into the terminal. Obviously, had to go back through security, which took a bit longer due to a longer line but still, got through pretty fast. Before rejoining Rosie I bought us some late airport dinner: a nice size make yourself salad and an Italian sandwich all for the bargain price of $32.00... OMG!!
Got back to the gate and the time was approaching 2130. By this time I'd already called the National Rent a Car twice to alert/update them to our delay. The Columbia location would normally only stay open until 1130 but, they were being very accommodating and told me they'd wait until 0100 before closing down - fair dinkum! We still had a chance of making it to Columbia and getting a car.
Our delay was being caused the weather preventing our aircrew from arriving from some other location in time to jump out of that arriving flight and running over to jump into our Embraer 135 to fly us to Columbia. Finally, the Gate personnel informed us that our aircrew had just landed, ~2145, and we would be boarding shortly. Shortly turned out to be 15mins later, excellent! We were told we could board all at once, which turned out to mean: walk down a ramp and onto a waiting bus that would ferry us out to the tarmac and our waiting Embraer 135. Haven't done that in awhile either.
Almost done blog followers. Our plane wasn't completely full so boarding was pretty simple. The Embraer 135 is a jet similar in look to a DC-9 or MD-9 just smaller. Seating is arranged: 1 seat/aisle/2 seats. We were in seats 10B/C just forward of the wing.
Wheels-in-Well on a very wet and foggy evening at 2240 enroute to SoCar!! 1+35 later we touched down in Columbia, deplaned, and made our way to baggage claim. While Rosie waited on our luggage, I got our rental - a very nice Hyundai Santa Fe - and we walked out of the terminal at 0035 and were in the SUV driving by 0045. Eventually made our way to I-26 East, drove for about 30 minutes and finally pulled off to check into a Holiday Inn Express. In the rack by 0130.
A very long day....
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