Sunday, December 20, 2009

walking in memphis

I had an insanely long day, and I must say that I'm glad that I showered last night before going to the airport, or else I would feel even grosser right now than I already do. As you know, my flight left SFO at 12:40am, putting me into Memphis sometime around six a.m. this morning. I had a couple of hours before my flight, so I wandered around and grabbed a quick breakfast before heading to my gate. But once I got there, things went from tired and miserable to concerned and annoyed -- they kept pushing the estimated departure back, before finally cancelling the whole flight around noon. They offered to either put me on a flight to Des Moines tomorrow, or on a nondirect flight with a layover in Atlanta. The last thing I wanted to do was get farther away from Iowa; the ten hour drive from Memphis home is right at the upper bound of how far I would want to drive by myself in a day. So, I opted for an evening flight direct to Kansas City, and my parents were kind enough to pick me up and drive the almost-three-hours back toward home.

Anyway, I became unnecessarily familiar with the Memphis airport. I felt that it was kind of a dump, and they've only really attracted off-brand restaurants and stores that do not instill confidence in the populace. I ended up eating three meals there, but I was falling asleep over my lunch and so forgot to use one of the meal vouchers that Northwest gave me. So I found a deserted gate and the one good 'amenity' of the airport (there are quite a few four-across seat benches without arm rests) and managed to sleep for three hours. This helped me get onto the final flight -- despite some early mechanical issues that made me worried about the likelihood of taking off, we made it to Kansas City less than fifteen minutes late.

Now I'm falling asleep over this blog post, so I'm going to bed. Maybe tomorrow I'll focus on writing - but we'll see how I feel after I've slept for a few hours. Goodnight!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I rather enjoyed the Memphis airport with its local eateries rather than the ususal suspects (a/k/a national chains). I changed planes at Memphis en route from DSM to Duke University for a conference a couple of years ago. On the flight from DSM I was able to pick out many Wayne County sites such as Allerton, the home of Jackson Creek Enterprises, Mother Teressa's house, etc. Charlie Overton's son was in the seat in front of me. I would like to go to Memphis someday to visit the national cemetery and the grave of civil war soldier Andrew Almond Mead, my gggrandfather. See you later, Slater.