So the flight from Phoenix (well, Mesa-Gateway airport, bit of a ways away from Phoenix) was at 6:30 AM. I was late getting to the airport, about 5:45 – and they had already closed the baggage for the flight :-( They re-opened it just for me, yay. I got to the gate, they said to go to the last plane on the end. I was literally the last person to get there. As I walked out onto the tarmac (well, it is Phoenix, you don’t really need a covered walkway… well not in the winter anyway, ha ha) and there were two planes there. As I got to the second one, I saw four more. It was the last plane on the end. So a quarter mile jog was in order. Oh well.
All of my winter clothes had been shipped to Phoenix (dumb but hey I just told them to “pack everything” and they did). I vacuum packed two winter jackets and wore a third, one that I thought was a good balance between light, and warm. My yellow jacket :-)
There were still people filing onto the plane, so no worries. I got back to my seat – I had the window seat – and the other two were taken, ugh. Oh well, in the back of the plane, you can sit anywhere you want, yay! Hmm, very young child in front of me, around 1-1/2 to 2 years old. Hmm. The young mom apologized to me “in advance” as soon as I sat down. Oh boy.
We set out on our 3 hour flight. It was mostly uneventful… and they offer you nothing to eat, nothing to drink. Well, they gave me a bottle of water, which was nice. I occupied myself by reading on my tablet, snoozing, and listening to some podcasts.
I was sitting in the 3rd last row on the McDonnell Douglas MD80. This means that the engine was right beside my ear. I used my noise cancelling headphones, that helped to alleviate the noise. The child in the row in front made a fuss a few times, but it was no big deal.
When it was time to land, we were deep in the clouds, could not see a thing. I could feel us turn, turn, turn, but that’s no surprise, I’ve felt that before on the approach to Grand Forks.
The captain came on and said something incomprehensible. With the engine noise, and apparently a problem with the P.A. system in our end of the plane, all I heard was “clearing snow”, fuel” and “divert to Fargo”. Oh boy. So we turned, climbed, broke out of the clouds, and dropped back in, landing in Fargo.
We sat on the apron (the road from runway to the airport terminal) for at least 3/4 hour, and finally they let us pull up to refuel. The engines were running the whole time, and it was quite monotonous, oh well. Wow was it windy and blustery.
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| Out the Window in Fargo |
| Not sure whether this jacket will get repaired, or just tossed |