Air + Road Trip

6/6/06 Tucson,
6/8/06 Los Angeles
6/10-12/06 Back to Blacksburg

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Day 3: Tacos and Travel

Today the was the second and last day of the meetings. For lunch we went across the street to a little fast food Mexican restaurant (again). It was nice to get a big pile of food. Sadly that the combination of a relatively passive discussion and a fully belly, I had a tough time getting through the afternoon meetings. I did run into one interesting thing. The urinals in the bathrooms ran without water. Makes sense. I would guess that a system like this would be quite useful in the rest of the country too.

After the meetings I said my goodbyes and headed off to the airport. I looked at my cool rental car, then my watch, and then the mountains. Since I had several hours before my flight was scheduled to take off, I went for a drive. I was careful to keep an eye on each road I turned onto.
Along the way I received a call from the airline. The time of the flight was changed, but not much. It didn't really change anything. It did however distract me enough to make me forget a turn. I hopped onto the highway and headed 'toward the airport' I was right at first, but the highway merged and I got turned around a bit. I decided to check out my automated map, Kia. Luckily he was home and he was able to find out pretty quickly that I was in the right place. All I had to do was wait for a few exits and I was there. It was nice to get a chance to say hi to him and reminisce about other times I got lost.
I checked in and made sure not to wake the sleeping airline attendant. I took a few scenic shots of the mountains and boarded the plane. They handed me a tag to put on my carry on bag. It's a bit larger than they'd like on some of the smaller planes, Since it is loaded with electronics, I stuffed the tag in my pocket when no one was looking and walked on like nothing was wrong.
The flight took off (movie) on time and we made our way west uneventfully. I was able to snap a few pictures out the window of the sun setting and a few shots at the end of the flight of the bright lights of LA. Also a few movies of flying and landing. I was excited to get fun snacks on this flight, a small fleet of airplane crackers.
Would you believe that I landed early? I grabbed my illegal carry on, and moved along in the airport until I found Will and Stretch. They were already waiting in the baggage return for me. Happily, they were as hungry as I was. Will drove us to In and Out burger. My meal was the infamous 'double double animal style'. That night we caught up a bit and tucked ourselves into bed. Tomorrow is another day of visiting and traveling.

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