A couple of weeks ago, we had our annual end of year meeting and party. The meeting was in Orlando and the party was in Cocoa Beach, which meant a trek to Florida. The cheapest flights available were on US Airways through Philadelphia (out of Sacramento), so I decided to give them another shot. The last time I had flown with this particular carrier was a few years ago, which was also through Philadelphia, but had different start and end points (San Francisco and Shannon). I was not exactly impressed by the experience.
This time, I was much more prepared for the trip and was traveling from a familiar airport, one that I had worked at for over 2 years. We got to SMF without much time to spare, but it turned out to be enough, including spending a few minutes here and there chatting with old friends. It was mostly as I had left it, with one notable exception – the announcements. They were professional sounding and actually made me want to listen to them. I’m going to try and get some audio of them to share with the world.
The bad news was that the flight was delayed by about 3 hours due to a weather issue in PHL, but we managed to get rerouted though LAS with one drawback – we would have a 5 hour layover in Vegas and wouldn’t get to MCO until around midnight. Faced with either missing our flight from Philly or unknown delays once we got there, we picked our first successful gamble of the day. If you have to spend 5 hours somewhere, there are worse places than Vegas.
It turned out that our original flight actually got clearance for take-off shortly after we got rerouted, but we stuck with the new plan, which was advised to us by a very helpful gate agent. People, be nice to your gate agents – they don’t cause the delays, but they get to deal with the consequences. Shortly after 10am, we were on our way.
We landed in LAS a little over an hour later and decided to head on over to the strip, so we got a cab over to the MGM Grand. Once inside, we hit the slots and won a little money. We decided to check out another casino and get something to eat, so we crossed the street to New York, New York. We ended up winning a bit more there and wound up covering our lunch (decent pizza) and cab rides to and from the airport with about $5 left over, which I spent on a few spins of the Wheel of Fortune slots at the gate area. My ability to play the game while watching it on TV did not translate to the slot machine and I lost it all. Soon, it was time to get on our way.
The flight to Orlando was pretty uneventful. I watched Get Smart on my iPhone and slept a little. The beverage charges, which are a major issue for some, weren’t even all that bad compared to airport prices. We landed at around midnight and took the retro-futuristic train to the main terminal area to pick up our rental car. Because it was so late, the FastBreak counter wasn’t open and the choice of cars was limited to either minivans or Mustangs. We opted for the latter and still paid the rate for the economy class car that I had reserved. With gas prices being as low as they are, the more aggressive vehicle didn’t cause too much of a dent in the funds. The drive to the hotel was incredibly short – we stayed at the Hilton Garden Inn by the airport.
Next morning, I had a meeting to attend at our head office, which was a couple of blocks from the hotel. I met up with some CowOrkers that I had never met face to face and some that I hadn’t seen for some time. It was great being able to interact with everyone in person and get some things accomplished that would have likely taken much more time, if they could even be accomplished at all, over the phone. After a lunch of pizza, we adjourned to the conference room for the main reason we were there that day. It wasn’t all doom and gloom but, like everyone, we need to be mindful of spending.
After all of that was done, I went about doing another couple of things at the office and got picked up to go to Cocoa Beach. We checked in at the Hilton and got quite a nice room on the executive floor. The view wasn’t stellar, but we could see a bit of the ocean. We got dressed in our finest Hawaiian garb, this being the theme for the evening’s festivities, and headed down to the bar, where we were informed that the party was starting up outside. The beer choice was not bad, either Samuel Adams or one of the generic domestics (Coors or Bud – can’t remember which because it didn’t sound appealing) and there were some hors d’oeuvres to munch on while we watched the hula and fire dancing.
The meal was decent, but nothing special to write about. There was also a video presentation made up of footage from the remote locations, but most of my efforts didn’t make it in because of CoDec compatibility issues. After the meal, there was some dancing to be done and some party games to be played. The old Sacramento crew got up and started the ball rolling as far as all that goes and an enjoyable night was had. At some point, it was decided that we go to the ABC store for some cigars. The details of said trip will not be divulged here.
The California crew (and the couple of honorary Californians for the night) stayed up and partied a lot later than everyone else, even though a couple of us were heading back to the west coast early next morning. Not being a morning person, I had scheduled our flights somewhere around mid day and so we had a relaxing breakfast before heading for the airport. Before dropping the car back, we put in $12 worth of gas to fill the tank – something that wouldn’t have been anywhere close to possible earlier in the year. Even though I had checked in online already, I had neglected to print out our boarding passes, so we needed to make a stop at the ticket counter to get them. We made it to the gate with just enough time left to board and get on our way, actually heading for Philadelphia this time.
PHL isn’t actually a bad airport, when you’re not dragging a 3 yr. old and related paraphernalia at high speed from one concourse to the other. There’s a mall like section in the middle, where we ate at a TGI Friday’s (the second of the weekend) that could have been anywhere, were it not for the plastic knife and fork. From what I can tell, PHL is the only airport in the US without a Starbucks, so we got our coffee from Saxbys instead before heading to the gate. I found the gate configuration to be pretty cool – there’s a ramp that leads around to a lower area with the actual jet bridge, which seems to prevent a huge backup while people board. I’m sure there are better explanations out there of the setup, but this is far too much of an epic already. I watched another couple of movies on the way back to SMF, where we arrived without incident.
All in all, it was a pretty pleasant trip and US Airways did nothing to take away from that. In fact, the rerouting through Las Vegas was a welcome bonus. Now that they’ve added SMF-PHL, I think we’ll be flying with them on our next trip back to Ireland in the summer.
