I Flew on an Airbus A319.... and Lived to Tell

For those of you who have visited this blog or know me at all it should come as no surprise that I love flying and anything airplane related. However I am somewhat partial to Boeing and will go way out of my way to fly on any model of their jets. I generally fly airlines that have either all Boeing or mostly Boeing fleets. My airline of choice for the last several yeas has been Delta. This was great as they operated a mostly Boeing fleet since the MD-88's they had were now considered part of Boeing after McDonnell Douglas was taken over by Boeing. I have never mined the Embraer jets that Delta's regional partners have operated either and while not a huge fan of the Bombardier CRJ's have gotten used to them as well. When Delta bought Northwest the all Boeing fleet went away as Northwest had a mixed fleet including many Airbus jets. These are now all repainted in Delta colors and the A319's are replacing many of the older less efficient MD-88's throughout the network. Delta is also using the Airbus A330 on overseas routes and also on long haul flights to Hawaii thru Atlanta. For many years I have not had any interest on flying in an Airbus. In fact the last one I flew on was an America West A321 many years back when CMH was a hub for America West. I took that flight to Las Vegas and was happy to not need the services of the Euro plane ever since. Well unfortunately this year my trip to the SCCA National Convention meant I would either have to hang out in the Atlanta airport for an extra 4 hours or swallow my pride and fly home on an Airbus A319. I did the latter....... and lived! My trip out had me on an MD-88 and then a 767-300. Returning from LAS to ATL I was jam packed into an OLD 757-200 without the video system. (yeah it had CRT monitors in the ceiling with color so washed out that skin color was green) Since I chose to fly Delta from CMH to LAS I had to give up the option of non-stop as only Southwest flies that route non-stop. If you know me then you know I will only fly SWA if they are the ONLY airline to go to the place I need to go. I refuse to fly them and happily pay much more to avoid flying with them. An interesting side note is that the non-stop flight on SWA cost more than the 1 stop on DAL. Several others went with me to the convention and all paid more. Those that bought their tickets a couple days before me paid about $15 more each way. Those that purchased on the same day as I did paid about $50 more each way, and those that purchased about 3 weeks after paid a whopping $175 more. The bonus to me was the skymiles as I'm now at 100K and am planning a trip to Hawaii. Only when researching that trip I discovered if I wanted to go thru Atlanta I'd have to fly on an........................Airbus.... Oh dear.

Quick Post: Live From Las Vegas

Well I'm on my annual trip to Las Vegas for the SCCA National Convention and it came at the perfect time. This morning I left a snowy andbiterly cold Columbus Ohio for the sun and warmth of Nevada. Today was 57 degrees with temps forecast near 70 by the end of the week. Wow what a difference. Last week we had an ice storm with nearly one inch of ice covering everything and bringing down trees across my property.Today I ate In-N-Out Burger in a sweatshirt. Will I win anything? Probably not, but I feel like I beat the winter blues and not a moment to son. Forecast for home this week: highs in the teens with lows in the single digits to negatives...

I'm Outta Here for a Week

Thats right its time to hit the road to Las Vegas. Not much gambling for me though. I will be attending the 2010 SCCA National Convention at the South Pointe. Its a nice place if you like being cooped up out in the middle of a dessert away from all the fun. I was there last year and unfortunately did not get to In & Out Burger. Not gonna happen this year as I will have access to a car. Since I'm the experienced guy going this year I will be the guide to the touristy places like Hoover Dam and the strip. I hope to get out to Nellis AFB for a few minutes to watch some fighter jet action. I am flying Delta and will be flying home for the first time on a 757-300 which is the stretched version of he 757. That means its an old Northwest jet and has no in seat entertainment either... I will bring my psp and ipod touch. Maybe even my laptop. Looks like my flight out is on a 767, but its changed 8 times since I booked it that who knows. Please turn the heat on for me!

Blondie not included.......

Back to the Story-- I'm feeling better

Wow how time has flown. Its been 2 and a half weeks since my last post and what was current then is old news now. I'll try to be more timely in my posts. So I left off in Vegas and thats a good place to pick up. The reason for my trip was to attend the 2009 SCCA National Convention. The SCCA is the Sports Car Club of America and I've been a member for 15 years. This was my first convention though. It went very well and I even came home up a bit winning $10.75. Las vegas itself has changed quite a bit since I was last there in 2002. The strip has a completely different look as new buildings are sprouting up everywhere. In fact the sidewalks were so crowded you could hardly walk. The planes coming in were all full as well. Las Vegas is not hurting. The high roller rooms were though. Our hotel was the South Point Casino about 8 miles off the strip. It was nice and the prices were fair. The trip home was not nearly as eventful as the way down. I had a 6:00 am flight to Atlanta on a Boeing 767. I love flying widebody aircraft as there is so much more room. I literally made it thru security with minutes to spare as I underestimated my time to get to the airport via a shuttle. All was well until my phone rang as the doors were about to close. My wife called to say there was no heat in the house back in Ohio. I had to talk quickly but told my wife to call the repair guys as our whole HVAC system was only 8 months old. Off to ATL I went. Upon landing my phone was ringing again. The furnace was fine (not) and we were out of propane. We live in the country so its either electric heat or a propane tank. Its cheap and warm if somewhat different. I told her call the gas guy. So I am standing in the middle of the terminal talking to a guy I know from Ft. Wayne and my phone rings again.

The Gas company won't talk to my wife as its my name on the account. I need to call them myself. I do and they eventually send out a truck. Gas will be on when I get home. I board my flight to Columbus, a MD-80. I hope we get off early as I hope to make my son's second game. The first game he got to by calling the opponent and asking one of them to drive and my dad agreed to pick him up and take him to the rink near the airport where I will take him home. I land in Columbus and get to the rink to find the game had ended. Oh well. The house will be warm and I am super tired having only gotten 2.5 hours of sleep.

When I get home the house is at 60 degrees. Calamity ensues as i try to figure out what's wrong. Lots of phone calls to the gas company and the HVAC company later the house is now 57 degrees. I am so tired at this point I just don't care and we all hunker down in the master bedroom for a night of camping in sleeping bags. When we wake up its 50 degrees. It turns out the burner did go bad....

So Then I came down with a horrible URI that had ben going around and I had a fever of 102 for a few days. It was really as sick as I've been in a while. The hard part was getting back to the regular grind.

Frudochs team won their first game in the championship and then lost to the Islanders and the Blues about 18 hours apart and they were out. A very disappointing end to the season for the only team to beat the islanders this year. We did go watch some of the playoffs although Fru thought they should have been there. Unfortunately the team played like individuals instead of a team. Lesson learned. Poppy finished her season playing full ice games and even got to join the Orange Crush for a full ice game an hour before her teams final game. Poppy was named player of the game for her play with the Orange Crush.

At the year end banquet both kids got awards for a great season. Frudoch getting a medal and Poppy a trophy. A load of pizza and pepsi too!. Last weekend the season came to an end with games in Athens Ohio for Poppy and Cleveland for Frudoch. I'll pick the story up there shortly with some photos.