Travel Diary

Tuesday morning started very early. In fact, I think I had to be up at 4 AM, and we were on the road minutes after that. It was cool to drive through downtown Fort Myers and see the streets deserted and what things look like when no one was around. Downtown still looks very nice and does not seem to have been affected by the hurricane as much as the other areas. I guess it's just more due to modern buildings having more secure foundations.

I said goodbye, and started the next part of my journey. The airport, of course, was pretty empty at five in the morning, though there were people already starting to line up to catch flights. One thing that wasn't empty was Starbucks, which had a line heading out of the place. People just love paying for overpriced coffee.

This flight would not be taking me to Seattle, but rather to New York City where I would catch another flight back home. It was just a lot cheaper to do it this way (or so I thought). I think with Uber fares it might've been more money, overall but what can you do. Since I wasn't on Alaska, I definitely didn't get any upgrade, and I was in economy. This was because I was on United Airlines, which has decent seats and little entertainment screen in front of each seat. That can be a nice perk which you don't see as much these days. The flight was only a few hours to get over to New York City.

But I wasn't landing in JFK where my next flight was, but rather I was landing in Liberty International in Newark, New Jersey. I then had to get over to the other airport. Now the choices were public trains or a private Uber. I pondered the trains, but I only had a couple hours for a layover and technically with train delays, that incurs a larger risk. I opted to spend about $100, which was kind of expensive although that is a very long drive to get to the other airport. And it was kind of fun seeing the scenery of New York in that area – even though a lot of it is industrial, but it was something different.

Add JFK, there wasn't much of his line for security. In fact, I don't know if anyone was in front of me. I think it's a Terminal 7 type thing, where they just don't have that many flights or people there. TSA pre-check always seems to go very fast at Terminal 7 (at least so far).

Soon, we were up in the air and heading west. I got my upgrade to first class, so the seat was comfortable and allowed me to get some nice photos of New York City as we headed out. I'll have to remember to try and sit on the left side of the plane in the future, even though it would seem like the right side would have the best shots of Manhattan. Up in the air I tried to get a little work done since it was a “workday” and I even bought the Wi-Fi pass for the flight. I got my free scotch and definitely enjoyed that perk. (Okay, if you’re MVP75K on Alaska, you get free drinks no matter where you sit in plane. But hopefully, it occurs in first class.)

The meal was a nice one with chicken and rice and some peppers. It also included a roll and a salad. Overall, a hearty meal. We were also offered some ice cream a bit later so I accepted that. It was from Salt and Straw and it was “double fold vanilla.” It's a nice treat when they do that and a little surprising since it was March and quite cold outside.

Out the window I could see that we were flying over the lakes of Michigan, and I snapped some photos of that. Such views I don’t often get to see from the air. Maybe the clouds are always covering it. A lot of the great plains were still covered with snow, making the land look like great big quilts of white blankets with crisscrosses form the roads.

A few hours later, we were landing in Seattle and I returned to work as usual.