Today started really late to me for a flight to Peru. My
plane didn’t depart until 1:30pm so I didn’t even leave the house until
10:00am. My father drove me to the airport and we had very little traffic. This
very early time to leave the house of course led to no issues with checking in
and dropping off the bag for check in either. Since I put my known traveler
number into the mileage plan for Delta I was given TSA Pre automatically and
security check in was also very easy (only 2 people in front of me, both
business travelers). I had not flown
Delta in a long time and this was a sort of experiment in flying them instead
of United or American to Lima. My last United experience in both directions was
obviously bad so we would see how this turned out in comparison. Really I bought these tickets because they
were significantly cheaper than anything else for this time at only about $645
or so. Maybe other airlines got cheaper
later than I purchased but one rule of air travel is never go back and look if
anything got cheaper. You can’t really do anything about it anyway.
At the airport I sat at the Harpoon Brewery bar and had a
couple IPAs as well as a hot dog. The beer was good and the hot dog was ok and
very big. It came with chips not French fries.
That killed the largest amount of time while waiting for the flight to
Atlanta to board. I spoke to the bartender who was an older woman from Bedford
which is where the Hologic office is.
Since they were just opening there weren’t many people there at first
and she was pleasant enough to talk to.
When I was done eating I cleared out and headed to the gate (all the way
across the hallway from the bar (right there that is)) and waited for the
boarding which was only a minute or two late.
Boarding put me in the last group but I still managed to find a slot in
the overhead for my backpack. The flight
was mostly uneventful mostly because I think I slept through more than 90% of
it, being awake only for takeoff and landing and the drink/snack service
time. They actually gave peanuts, or
pretzels or cookies. I was a bit surprised for a domestic flight in the
US. I chose the peanuts. We landed easily and I was able to get to the
E concourse from the A concourse fairly easily too. I had an hour and a half from landing time to
departure time officially and was able to easily get to the gate before
boarding started by about 15 minutes which gave me enough time to get this
written. By the way the first plane was
a MD90 which had no entertainment system in it at all. They had wifi but I never took my laptop out
obviously and am sure I didn’t want to pay for it anyway.
The second plane was a 767-300ER. I was seated on the left outside aisle seat.
My neighbor was a woman from Winnipeg who was going to Peru for the first time but
had traveled quite a bit. We talked for probably the first two hours of the around
6 hour flight until the food was served then we both settled in to watch movies
on the in seat entertainment. The food was
typical airplane fare and I chose to just eat the extras and not the actual hot
food. I had a glass of red wine to go with it.
So basically I ate the tomatoes out of the salad, the cheese, crackers,
roll and brownie. I watched How to Train
Your Dragon 2 which was cute. After that
was over I watched a movie called The Chef, the Actor and the Scoundrel which was
a Chinese movie about, I am sure fantasized, about some Chinese agents stealing
a cholera vaccination from the Japanese during their east China occupation. It was partial comedy and partially
serious. I was confused by it at first
but that is common with Chinese movies for me.
I think at first I was going to stop watching it but the real plot came
in just in time to save it so I watched it to the end. By the time the movie was over there was less
than 40 minutes to landing and I just watched the flight map. I talked with my neighbor a little bit more
and gave her Daniela’s business card in case she had any issues and needed
help. The plane landed 15 minutes early.
Immigration was a bit full after deplaning. There were 3 other flights landing at the
same time it appeared. I got through reasonably well enough though. Then I think I was the 3rd from
the last bag on the conveyor at baggage claim so I had to wait a long
time. The lines for customs were also
long because of all the planes arriving at the same time but I snuck through to
the far side and got through that reasonably well also. They were xraying every bag that came off the
planes but not searching in general.
Daniela was waiting outside for me. I had texted her when
the plane landed and she got there before I was through all the lines. She looked beautiful as ever. After greeting
each other we got outside and found a taxi to her house where since it was
already past midnight we basically just settled in for the evening. Though I
had previous had bad experiences with Delta this part of the trip went very
well and I was happy with the fact I arrived on time instead of 3 or more hours
late. I know that weather played a part
in the last trip but still I think it was avoidable. I am sure that most planes
weren’t diverted to different airports like mine was.
No pictures for the mostly transit day.
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