Well guys, after what is possibly the longest-feeling short trip of my life, I have typed out "Layovers and L.A." For the most part it was a good trip, but as you can see the good and bad parts were easily split into two sections: layovers, and L.A. I hope you enjoy this From the Man Himself, and get ready for some even better ones in the making for this summer.
The adventure began in my room at 3 AM in the morning, March 22, 2003, when my alarm woke me up and sent my brain reeling in a land of whacky confusion. After showering, I made sure that I had everything I needed, then went to the computer to put up some AIM Conversations. My fans had better have appreciated my hard work, because I really didn't feel like being alive at that point, and putting up the conversations almost made me late.
My mom and I pulled out of our driveway at about 4:10 AM, heading for the school to drive the guys (seven other guys on the computer science team and Mrs. Rountree) to Nashville, where our first flight was departing at 8:10 AM. We got on the plane with no trouble and headed off to Atlanta, our first stop.
After sitting in between two business-type guys for about 30 minutes, I arrived at the Atlanta airport, which as I soon found out is pretty stinkin' huge. We had to run nonstop to make it to our next gate in time. When we got to the gate, people were already boarding the plane, and oy, my arm was tired from carrying my suitcase. (I really should have checked it to Ontario.)
Next came a long, 4-hour flight to the Mormon capital of the world, Salt Lake City. The guy next to me was pretty nice, but not too talkative. I tried to initiate conversation, but he wasn't down with it, so I gave up and read my book instead (Redwall by Brian Jacques; and no, I do not promise a Book Review on it any time soon.) The inflight movie was About Schmidt, but I didn't appreciate the $5 viewing fee and went to sleep instead.
After coming in and out of conciousness for a few hours, I woke up and spent most of the rest of the flight looking at the Rockies out of the window, drinking the complimentary Sprite, and doing some not-reading. It was a bit cramped, but still liveable. Soon, we taxied to our gate and walked to our gate of next departure for Ontario, CA (not Canada, California; I had embarrassingly made that mistake earlier).
After our short flight in a regional jet from Salt Lake to Ontario (which had a very entertaining black woman for our flight attendant), we landed to a 92 degrees F Los Angelos-ish airport, and carried all of our wonderful luggage to the airport shuttle. Once we got to the Budget auto rental desk, we stuffed our luggage and all nine of our bodies into a much too tiny Ford Expedition and drove to the hotel.
The Fairfield Inn was very nice, and in fact right across the street from Disneyland. We sat around for a little while and flipped channels on the TV (there were two really awesomely whacked-out Spanish channels). After setting down our stuff and being bored, we went out to eat.
The ribs place we went to was pretty good, but as far as I could tell, our waiter was a bit creepy. He seemed a bit trippy to me, but you never really can be sure. His lisp wasn't that bad, but it was definitely enough to be noticeable. And when I gave him a $20 for my meal with my receipt, he just assumed I was giving him a $13 tip...tsh. Anyway, that's just about the most contact I had with "other lifestyle" people all weekend, thankfully.
We went back to the hotel, watched some more Spanish TV, and then left that night in a search of a 12-pack of Mountain Dew. Unfortunately, California seems to be a backward society where Mountain Dew is only sold in single bottles and 2-liters, not in cans. We dejectedly returned to our room and went to sleep.