Sweet Home Alabama

(Based on the events of Monday, September 17th)

My last flight of the day was supposed to be exactly one hour from gate-to-gate. Actually my ticket said we'd leave at 5:25pm and arrive at 5:24pm, time travel! I got settled into my seat, ready for my travels to be over and hoping to have a little nap. Lucky for me, the captain was of the chatty variety. This is where a sarcasm font would be handy. He told us, in a most verbose manner, that we were stuck in a rather long line for the runway and would have to wait a while. We finally took off into cloudy skies after 20 minutes or so of sitting there. It was a rather smooth, uneventful trip until we started our decent. At that point the captain came back on to inform us that it was raining too hard to land so we had to circle for a while and wait for the storm to move on. This was rather alarming because I thought the South is known for a lot of rain, like the north is known for snow, so if it was raining hard enough for them to take notice, it had to be some crazy sort of rain storm! Of course our plane was so small we couldn't get above the clouds, so we circled THROUGH the clouds for a while. Luckily it passed fairly quickly, and not nearly as bad as it could have been, and we came in to land. Here's a couple of my first glances of my new home:

I'm pretty excited about how green it is at least :)

I got off the plane around 6:15pm CDT, 30-40 minutes after schedule. I breathed a sigh of relief and headed towards the baggage claim. As I started down the escalators and noted that the rental car desks were right next to the baggage carousels (much like PSC) I started thinking about how I was going to get my two HUGE bags to the car by myself. I got the keys for my rental car before the bags came out on the carousel. I found one of those things where you can rent a cart, like at the mall, but it was $3 and took only singles. All I had was a $20! And nobody around could make change for me. Right as I was about to go hunting for somebody that could make change, my bags showed up. I pulled them off the carousel and sat there staring at them for a bit, trying to wrap my exhausted brain around how much crap I had brought:

I looked around in despair, looking for anybody who might be willing to help me. Alas, it appeared that I was alone. I sighed and loaded up my nearly 100 pounds of stuff and headed towards the door. Now, when I had picked up the keys to my rental the lady asked me if I wanted a Toyota Corolla or a Kia Spectra. Of course I said the Corolla, eager for a small familiar thing. I should have asked which one was parked closer. The Kia, I noted, was in the first parking spot by the door. The Corolla was the farthest. Just my luck!

I started shuffling through the parking lot, dragging one bag 'cause I couldn't even pick it up with everything else. At one point I noticed that one of the side pockets had busted open at the seam, I haven't thought of anything that was in there that I can't find, but who knows? Needless to say it took me quite a while to get to the car and get loaded up. At least it wasn't actively raining. 

I got settled in the car, adjusted the seat and mirrors, found a decent radio station, and set up my phone/GPS to head me to the hotel. It estimated I'd be there in an hour. I figured that wasn't too bad. I remembered from checking the map that there was a Walmart just before the hotel, so I headed out with that as my destination. The highway was fairly easy to find, my phone GPS works better than the TomTom (in my opinion). I got on the highway and went to set the cruise control when the floodgates in the sky opened up. I immediately went through a huge puddle and started hydroplaning right off the road. Ok, no cruise control then! I moved into the right-hand lane and slowed down a bit. I s'pose I could draw this out, but I'm tired. Basically it took me well over an hour to get to the Walmart. It rained harder than I have ever seen in my life. The road was flooded in places and there was a big accident at one spot. I could hardly see, even with the wipers on "high." I'm not sure I've ever used the wipers on "high" for more than a couple minutes before!

Anyway I stopped at Walmart and picked up a rain coat as I couldn't remember if I had packed mine or not. I also picked up sandwich fixings and snacks to pack in my lunches for the week. Then I finally headed to the hotel. I checked in and got a luggage cart (thank goodness they're free at the hotel!) and loaded it up. After getting stuck in the hallway twice and in the elevator I finally made it to my room. I dragged my stuff in and took the cart back down to the lobby. I unpacked a little, finding a good portion of my things were quite soaked. I made a sandwich for lunch for my first day at work, and collapsed into bed. The first stage of my adventure, the getting here, was over. I guess I'd better get used to saying "sweet home Alabama."