My Singha beer went well with my dinner at the Papya Thai restaurant near the airport.
Oy. Delta delayed my flight out of Pittsburgh to Minneapolis-St.Paul again by enough to make it impossible for me to get to Seattle. At least I found out about this before returning my rental car, and checking my bag. So I’m staying over and shipping out on Thu morning to Seattle. I have to go and pack for my trip out to London with to embark on the Princess cruise ship Friday night London time!
P.S. It is a momentous day for married gay couples in California, and those planning to marry in states that have marriage equality. The long-awaited US Supreme Court ruling of today declared Prop 8 as well as the ‘Defence Of Marriage Act’ unconstitutional (see my post Prop 8 and DOMA).
And here is the extended parking lot at Pittsburgh airport where I stopped to rebook my flight and found a hotel for the night. The Hyatt at the airport had rooms, but was too pricey. It was hard to find another hotel! I had to drive back almost all the way to the city to find a Marriott Springfield Suites. (I’m not a hotel snob, but it has to be a Marriott property, so that I know what I am getting).
I can now watch TV at 6.00 am in the Yellow Cab to Seattle airport (NOT).And here is a new Blackberry Z10 booth right by the security checkpoint, saying ‘Never Break Stride’. Yes, I thought, so much for that. Going through airport security definitely breaks one’s stride. Especially if you have to carry two notebook computers that have to come out of the bags with liquids, watches, smartphones and iPads, shoes off, belt off, empty pockets. Here I am waiting at the door to board the plane in Minneapolis-St.Paul, for Pittsburgh.
I took Delta again to Pittsburgh with the stop in Minneapolis-St.Paul this morning. The Yellow Cab company always makes my house phone ring, announcing ‘Your cab has arrived’ .. and then it’s another 3-4 minutes before the cab shows up. And there is still no Yellow Cab Seattle iPhone app .. come on people, get with the program! : )
It was raining in Seattle, but clear and warmer out east. In fact, it is high summer in Pittsburgh with the temperatures in the 90s (low 30s C).
I only had time for a quick walk around the block today since I had work to complete and packing to do for another quick trip to Pittsburgh in the morning. The streets here were wet with a little sprinkling of rain now and again, but it was very pleasant outside. I ended up at the Canterbury Ale & Eats here on 15th Ave again .. which is of course a reference to the Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, written at the end of the 14th century; it is about story-telling by a group of pilgrims. By this time next Sunday I will be on my own pilgrimage by boat around the British Isles if all goes well !
Here’s a cool trick with Delta’s app : use the phone camera to scan your copy of the bag tag. It shows if the bag made it onto your flight (and if not, which later flight it is on).Here’s our arrival at Minneapolis/St Paul airport.I love the giant moose at the Minnesota souvenir store.And here’s our Boeing 757 flying machine with Lake Washington and the SR520 bridge in the background, approaching Seattle-Tacoma airport.
I was a little worried about my checked bag that I had to leave at Pittsburgh airport last night after changing my flights to Seattle at the last minute, but I discovered that Delta’s smartphone app lets one scan the bag tag (the sticker you get when you check the bag) to determine its location : pretty neat. So the bag was pulled last night from my original Pittsburgh-Minneapolis flight and put on the one this morning. The airport at Minneapolis was crowded, with lots of families traveling. The US airlines expect the most fliers in five years for 2013 – but not quite reaching the all-time high volume of some 217 million travelers that flew in 2007, the industry’s high point.
I thought I was home free since the very large storm system here in the Midwest was moving east and I was going to fly west .. but no : too many flights in Atlanta and Chicago have been canceled or delayed. I was going to make it from Pittsburgh into Minneapolis only by midnight, with no connecting flights left to take me to Seattle. So I decided to stay put in Pittsburgh, walked over to the Hyatt hotel that’s right here and I will make an early start out in the morning when the skies are clear and friendlier.
Not too much weather activity remaining in Pittsburgh, but the storm has done enough damage to the airline schedules elsewhere to impact us here. Here’s the storm and the little blue and red airplane flies that are trying to dodge it.
Google Maps on my phone shows me howto get to the US Steel Tower.The US Steel Tower in downtown Pittsburgh has 64 stories and was constructed in 1970. jHere’s a close-up of the steps leading up to the main entrance of the US Steel Tower.Here’s one of the main entrances.The beautiful art deco-style Gulf Tower is just a block away from the US Steel Tower. It was constructed in 1932 by the Gulf Oil Company.
My firm’s Pittsburgh office is located in the US Steel Tower in downtown Pittsburgh, so off I went this morning to get my notebook fixed up. I found the building easily, but had to search for a parking garage close by. Then – miraculously- a spot on the street just big enough for a Toyota Corolla opened up. I was in luck : my rental car for the week happened to be one! So I squeezed it into the parking spot, walked just a block or so, and went up to the 52nd floor of the US Steel Tower. Jason the IT support guy snapped out the solid state hard drive out of my coffee-spilled machine, popped it into a new Lenovo T430 shell, and presto! I was back in business.
I’m out in Pittsburgh again, and I arrived via the Minneapolis/St.Paul airport on Delta Airlines.
The MSP airport is a lot nicer than Chicago’s O’Hare (sorry Chicago ..) : not as crowded, more modern inside, and with nice stores and food offerings.
Here’s what my trek across the country looked like today : Seattle to Pittsburgh with a stop in Minneapolis/St.Paul’a airport.This is the early morning view to the outside from the Seattle airport’s food court in the main concourse.
It was another very early start to the day for me with a 6.30 am flight out of Pittsburgh airport. I almost did not make it onto the flight. The check-in area was swamped with people when I got there at 5 am. I just had to drop my bag at United, but there was no bag-drop line. So by 5.45 am I was still in line and I yelled as politely as I could ‘Ma’am! I’m on the 6-30 to Chicago!’ . That got me to the front to dump my bag and I was off to the security line. Mercifully my return flight was marked ‘TSA Pre’ as well, so I could scoot through there in a few minutes and make a dash for the gate.
Here’s the obligatory picture of the colorful underpass between Terminal B and Terminal C at Chicago O’Hare airport.The dinosaur skeleton at gate B8 is peering down at the humans waiting to board the flight to Seattle. It’s a fibre-glass replica of the 40-foot-high, 75-foot-brachiosaurus that roamed around in Colorado 150 million years ago. The real bones are in the Field Museum in Chicago.Here is our Seattle-bound Boeing 737.And here is the iconic Space Needle on the display at the boarding gate. 4 1/2 hours to Seattle : a long way to go.
It was a shock to my system to roll out of bed at 3.30 am after a fitful few hours of sleep to get ready for my 6 am flight out to Chicago and then on to Pittsburgh. It helped that I was selected for ‘TSA Pre’ treatment at the airport. ‘TSA Pre’ is a program for frequent travelers that allows them entry into a special lane at the security checkpoint. The traveler gets to keep on shoes and jacket, and liquids and computers in the bag. Wow! But don’t get too spoiled! It will not happen every time even if you travel a lot.
My United Airlines boarding pass says I am ‘TSA Pre’. (Short for pre-checked. You have to opt in, and already be enrolled in a pre-check program such as Global Entry and use a participating airline. And even then, selection is random and not guaranteed every time ! ).Here’s my cranberry-colored Prius hybrid rental car that I drove up to Cranberry Township (a 30 min drive north of Pittsburgh).
A few of us from Seattle with family will go on the Princess Cruise shown below. We will try to manage the potential hazards as best we can (sinking ship, adrift with no power, seasickness!). I have really not been outside of London except for a train ride up to Birmingham, so I am really looking forward to see Ireland and Scotland (and the Loch Ness monster*).
*The Loch ness monster is a cryptid, from the Greek “κρύπτω” (krypto) meaning ‘hide’. It is a creature or plant whose existence has been suggested but is not yet recognized by scientific consensus. Kind of like Bigfoot (Sasquatch), the ape-like creature that some people believe inhabits the forests here in the Pacific Northwest.
What is special about Ushuaia? Well, it’s the world’s southern-most city (pop. 56,956 from its 2010 census). It is situated at the south coast of the Tierra del Fuego archipelago (‘the Land of Fire’) in Argentina. Also, a very good friend of mine – in a party of five – is there this week and next, to check out the spectacular scenery and to do a hiking trip in the mountains close by. Summer is at an end in the southern hemisphere, but since it’s so far south, the temperatures are only in the 50s ºF (11ºC).
From Ushuaia, there is a tourist boat to The ‘Lighthouse at the End of the World’ some 5 nautical miles east of Ushaia. The lighthouse has been there since 1920.
Ushuaia is situated at the south coast of the Tierra del Fuego archipelago (‘the Land of Fire’) in Argentina. The city’s motto is ‘At the end of the world, the beginning of everything’.Have you tried walking around in other place with Google? Zoom in on a Google Map and then fly in to a spot with your virtual self and drop in and walk around by manoevering your mouse pointer. Ushuaia’s Virtual Tour is limited to pictures of the scenery scattered around the city and its harbor, but still good enough to ‘look around’ with.This might be the tourist boat that go out to the Lighthouse at the End of the World.
7 a.m. at Pittsburgh airport. Our Being 737 is getting ready for the flight to Chicago. That’s a regional United Express jet across from us.Approaching Chicago airport .. Lake Michigan has snow and ice around the edges.Taxiing to the gate at Chicago’s O’Hare airport .... and going from Concourse B to Concourse C with the underpass to catch my flight to Seattle.
It was an early morning for me! Got up at 4 am Eastern time for the 7 am Pittsburgh to Chicago flight. On the way there I took a wrong turn and swung by Pittsburgh downtown – instead of taking the more direct route to the airport. The airport was very busy with check-in crowds even at 5.30am; it must have been all the travelers that could not get out on Friday.
There was still lots of snow on the ground in Chicago, but the runways at the airport were clear. The ground crews are well-equipped to handle snow, though : about 20 trucks with snow plows were lined up on the side of the runway.
There is more snow in the Midwest : trouble for my connection tomorrow through Chicago, and United Airlines has cancelled my flight. There is an alternate routing through Houston available, but it gets me in so late on Friday night that it’s not worth it. So I will travel back home early Saturday morning. The ‘wintry mix’ – snow and ice and rain – will catch us here in Pittsburgh tomorrow (Pittsburgh sits under the pink MIX on the map).
The mug is from Starbucks’s ‘city icon’ series (no, I didn’t buy it, too bulky and I don’t drink 16 oz of coffee at a time, yikes! ) .. but what is the icon on the mug, I wondered? Is it a tree? And why is it not one of the city’s nice steel bridges that’s on the mug, I wondered. Well : it’s a fountain, the one in Point State Park at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, forming the Ohio River. I’ll have to go check it out, but – it’s quite a drive to the city from the offices where we work, and the weather is pretty darn cold, dipping into the teens today.
Happy President’s Day! It was a travel day for me – I left Seattle very early at 6 am for Chicago, then on to Pittsburgh.
Waiting at my gate in Concourse C at Chicago’s O’Hare airport. Yes, you are in my picture 🙂 .. to the unknown guy on the left looking at me.And here I’m sitting in my seat. The luggage handler on the right is dispensing a last few bags onto the gravity chute so that it can be picked up below to go into the cargo hold.
I know we live in the information age, but I am still impressed every other day with the information I can get to with the internet and my smart phone. Check this out, a run-down from last night.
7.01 pm We have landed at Chicago, in from Pittsburgh. The snow in Chicago has started falling. I can see that, don’t need the iPhone weather app to tell me that! But what is the temperature? If it’s not too cold, the snow will melt quickly and not be a big problem for the runway and the aircraft. Well, it is 34 °F. Better get out of here before it drops to 30 °F in the next hour or so, though.
7.14 pm We’re still on the tarmac, waiting for the plane at gate B5 to get de-iced so that it can move and allow us to pull up. Hmm. Let me check with United’s app if my flight to Seattle is still scheduled for an on-time departure. Yes. I can even see where the incoming plane is from (Washington, DC). It has almost arrived and is scheduled to arrive 9 minutes early, in fact.
8.06 pm We have gotten to gate B5. I just have to walk over to gate B10 for the Seattle flight. Almost time to board. If I’m lucky I will get upgraded to the big seats in first class. Have I been? Yes! .. the upgrade list that used to be classified information available only the sometimes-surly ground personnel, is now available to everyone (to obsessively check every 3 minutes if you feel you have to?). That’s me in seat 3E on the Upgrade List. (Later, before we departed, the guy across the aisle in 3B made a fuss when he discovered his seat’s overhead light was not working. ‘I need it to read, my Kindle is not backlit!’, he complained to the stewardess. I knew exactly what was going to happen next : ‘Will I be so kind to consider trading seats with him?’ she asked. ‘Alright, then’ I said (thinking : Good Grief, the way that guy is carrying on, they’re going to hold the @#$% flight to call Maintenance to get it fixed. Can’t let that happen).
8.30 pm Our turn to get some de-icing done. It has actually stopped snowing and is raining now, so we should be in good shape for getting out.
8.45 pm We’re getting pushed back from the gate. Four hours to Seattle, and 1,720 miles for an 11 pm Pacific Time arrival, two time zones away from Chicago’s Central Time.
And what is the weather like in Seattle? I forgot to check before we left in Chicago. This flight does not have in-flight internet, so I will have to wait until we land to know – which was perfectly OK. It was great to be headed home to the Pacific Northwest, far, far away from the Northeast which was about to be pummeled with the blizzard of the century.
The view out of the plane at gate B10 in Chicago, almost ready to depart for Seattle.
I was the passenger in my colleague’s rental car to the airport, so I could take a few pictures on the way out. It looks like my connection in Chicago is still good (without delays due to the large weather system forming in the northeast).
This is Neville Island Bridge (opened in 1976), getting us across the Ohio river on I-79 on the way to the Pittsburgh airport.Is an airport beaver the same as a regular beaver? (I guess that’s me : the airport beaver).The entrance to PIttsburgh airport. There is a US Air Force base nearby, with the 171st Air Refueling Wing (171 ARW) of the Pennsylvania Air National Guard that operates sixteen KC-135T Stratotanker air refueling aircraft..This live map shows arriving and departing flights. I think the blue blob is winter storm Nemo moving in!
Google maps on my iPhone shows how to get from Moon to Mars.
I’m in Pennsylvania, in the Pittsburgh area again for a few days. Moon is just north of Pittsburgh airport, and Mars is where the hotel is. It’s a 40 min drive to the hotel. There is snow on the ground but the roads are clear of snow and ice. Just watch out on the turns for iced surfaces !
P.S. So the black birds (Ravens) won the Superbowl, and no word from officials at the Superdome and its energy company, Entergy, as to what caused the 34 minute black-out. A circuit breaker worked as designed, but why did the circuits become overloaded? ‘It’s NOT Beyoncé’s fault*’ says James L. Kirtley Jr., professor of electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
*Beyoncé and her dancers put on a dazzling, hologram-assisted halftime show on a lit-up LCD-like stage floor.
My cell phone could not quite handle the bright white of the Heinz ketchup sign. (I may have posted a picture of it before, but hey, here’s another). Heinz’s world headquarters is in Pittsburgh.
We completed our ‘blueprinting’ phase workshops in for our project today. Weather wise, the light snow of the last few days gave way to freezing rain* in the Salt Lake City area. There was so much of the stuff that the airport was closed for a few hours after a JetBlue plane skidded after landing (no injuries, and it stayed on the runway). It also made for a slow and treacherous drive out to the airport from Ogden.
*[From Wikipedia] Freezing rain is made entirely of liquid droplets. The raindrops become super-cooled while passing through a sub-freezing layer of air many hundreds of feet above the surface, and then freeze upon impact with any object they encounter. The resulting ice, called glaze, can accumulate to a thickness of several centimeters.
Tweet from Mike Seidel reporting for the Weather Channel about the freezing rain in the Salt Lake City area.My little red rental wagon had an ice blanket as I was preparing to drive it back to the airport. And the parking lot was as slippery as an ice rink in places. Watch out !
I am in Ogden for a last trip for now (but will probably come back in March). Here are some pictures from today. It is a little warmer than last Monday, but still well below freezing at night.
This is at the South Terminal. The Virgin America airplane is just taxiing up to its gate. The FAA’s grounding of all 787’s continues to be in the news. Boeing has stopped delivering new planes to customers but (for now) is continuing with their manufacture. It’s cheaper to continue doing that and putting the fixes (coming out of the investigation) with the lithium batteries in later. About FIVE a month is built – and the machines go for about $200 million each.A summary of the temperatures in the Salt Lake City area so far, reported by a local TV station. (Note that those are Fahrenheit temperatures! 32 F is O C)
