Now Boarding...

There was a time people dressed up to fly.

Let's just say that was a long time ago.

Now those long metal tubes serve as an effective way to get from here to there in short order.  At least when it comes to long distances.

Madison to Detroit is just 45 minutes in the air - a big improvement over driving that distance which can an involve a ferry across Lake Michigan or navigating busy highways around Chicago.

In a plane, its a fast up followed by a short leveling off and gradual descent.

Except last Saturday when an engine refused to start at 5:30am requiring a repair person to be rousted out of bed to start the engine.  We left 30 minutes behind schedule.  Somehow, we "made up" some of the time, but still had just 20 minutes to make our connection.

We made it thanks to a couple of wonderful developments.

First, we were taking advantage of wheelchair service for my travel partner. 

Major kudos to Delta on this.  They had a chair and a person to push it right after checking our luggage.

Jousting through the long line at security wasn't required since our porter took us to the front of the line and whisked us right through and to the plane.

In Detroit (both ways) we were met by another person and a chair to make the connection.  Since we were short on time, the porter took us as fast as possible and the plane waited for us and another passenger.  We boarded and doors closed shortly afterwards.



Looking out the small passenger windows was great fun with the clear weather we enjoyed on the way southwest.  There were majestic views of the snow covered Rockies (sadly, those pictures didn't come out very well, the east coast of Lake Michigan is on the left during our last leg home).

Young people and old ones were on board, and it was pretty full on three of our four flights.  The final leg back to Madison was only half-full, which had the benefit of providing more elbow and leg room.

No luggage was lost.  The planes were on time (except for the first departure) and the flights were smooth.

The service was fine, but I noticed that if you wanted a bite to eat on the plane and didn't bring something with you - it would be an additional charge.  No worries, Delta accepts debit and credit cards.

The last travel incident of note was in the last security line when a TSA officer told me I had been chosen for a random screening.

OK.  I was told to walk over to another officer.  She asked me to hold my hands out, palms up.  Then, using a small (2 inches by 1 inch) piece of paper she rubbed it in two directions across each palm.  Then it was inserted into a machine.  Ten seconds later, I was free to go.

I'm not sure what they were looking for... thankfully it wasn't Mt. Dew residue and that I washed my hands!