On the Road to...

St. Louis!

Although I'm not quite ready to return to work, I have to admit that I am looking forward to traveling to the St. Louis area. Mainly because I've never been there before and I always like to travel to places I've never been.

With my job, it's possible that I could travel on any day of the week. Although today is Saturday, I love to take Saturday flights. Depending on where I am traveling to and from, Saturday flights tend to be less crowded. Business travelers typically travel the most on Sunday, Monday or Friday; and people traveling for pleasure typically travel before the weekend to get to their destination.

My flight today was no exception - thankfully plenty of empty seats (no one likes to sit cramped up next to someone else) and I had an entire exit row to myself! I love to get an exit row seat due to the extra leg room (I'm 5' 7"). And just in case there is an emergency, I always say a short prayer before each flight that everything goes well so I won't have to be responsible for the exit row door in the event of an emergency. (I also like to think that a kind gentleman will be more than willing to assist me with this responsibility if needed)

This morning as my flight left the gate, we quickly returned to the gate due to a problem with one of the instruments. The pilot was very kind to keep us updated throughout the process. Although an hour after returning to the gate an announcement was made that the plane was 'out of service' and we would need to deplane. By time we deplaned, another plane had been located for us just a few gates away. After waiting another 30 minutes, we were able to board. Only to get on the second plane to be told that there was an auxiliary unit that wasn't working properly. So after another hour on a plane we were finally off into the clear blue ski. Even after the 3 hour delay, I still stand by Saturday being a great day to fly!

The morale of the story is to make certain you bring things to keep you busy when traveling, like reading material, your iPod, or some type of electronic device (I guess kids can be entertaining too depending on their age). Unfortunately there was a problem with the Nook app on my iPad to read the books I recently purchased and downloaded. Fortunately I found out Citi/Advantage Card was offering 30 free minutes of Internet access, which allowed me time to reinstall the app and download the books again. Problem solved! This little nugget of info was only learned after checking my email during one of the delays. So see, some good can come from subscribing to emails from the airlines that you frequent.

Don't forget to check back to see what I figured out to do (in additon to working) while in St. Louis. And if you've ever been to St. Louis or the surrounding area, please feel free to recommend some things for me to do!