Vacation Recap

I have returned safe and sound from my vacation.  I would love nothing more than to say it was magnificent, wonderful, amazing, or any other superlative description.  It WAS good.  It WAS fun.  But overall it felt like driving over to my friends place when he lived a couple hours drive away.

And you know what... that's good enough.  If I had to describe this in as few words as possible it would go something like this:

I flew down.  I hung out.  I flew back.

I guess since I went into so much detail in my last post about flying, I should cover how that went.  I could say that I overworried about it, but I believe that honest worry helped me research it fully and be prepared for everything that came up.  I ended up getting a ride to the airport and they dropped me off at the curbside 'departures' area.  Walking into the airport I was presented with a very long 'hallway' with all the ticket counters.  I had checked in online 24 hours earlier and therefore didn't have to stop at the counter so I stopped and packed up the last few things.
I kept out my drivers licence and boarding pass while putting my wallet and phone into my bag.  I unzipped the portion of my bag containing my 'liquids' baggie and stepped into the security checkpoint line.  It seems that flying out late in the day (my flight departed at 7:30 PM) was a good choice as there weren't that many people.  I watched the people in front of me to get an idea of what to expect and therefore was ready with my boarding pass and ID when I got to the front of the line.

Once those were handed back to me I was directed to the actual security checkpoint.  I was surprised at just how inefficient and unprepared the people were in front of me.  They were grabbing one of the X-Ray totes and emptying pockets, unlacing shoes, fishing through their bags for liquids and just taking a terrible amount of time.  When I got to the area where I could grab a tote I slipped off my loafers and dropped them into one.  I took off my watch, ring, and belt and placed them into the tote.  I added my ID, boarding pass, and liquids baggie and dropped the tote along with my bag onto the X-Ray conveyor belt.  When my turn came I stepped into the scanner, put my hands above my head as directed and giggled as I imagined them seeing through my clothes.

The scan took all of three second and I stepped through to gather up my scanned luggage and shoes.  Once everything was back in place (ID and pass in pocket, watch ring belt and shoes on, baggie in bag) I followed the easy to follow signage to my gate. Because I had followed the instructions to arrive two hours early I now had one hour and fifty minutes to kill.  Yes... it only took 10 minutes from being dropped off to make it to my gate.

I wandered around a bit, got something t drink and ended up sitting at my gate reading my Kindle (Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov).  Several times during my wait the gate announcer came on and reminded all of us that if we had carry on baggage that we'd be seated first.  So when she started getting all the special people on (unaccompanied minors, people with infant children, people in wheelchairs or using crutches....) I got ready.  Getting ready consisted of placing my tasty bottle of Mountain Dew in my pocket (thank god for big pockets), getting my boarding pass and drivers license in hand, and keeping my Kindle out.

Again, the amount of people unprepared even when the announcer clearly states how to be ready is mind boggling.  People didn't have their passes out.  People didn't have their passes cut in half (it's Spirit... we print out our passes at home).  People had carry-on bags that they hadn't paid for.... sheesh people.

Anywho I eventually got passed through and made my way to my seat.  As we were being seated first, I had ample room above my seat for my bag.  Sitting down I placed my Kindle in the seatback in front of me, place my Mountain Dew on the arm rest, and proceeded to read the 'safety brochure'.

After everyone was seated and the stewardess gave the safety speech we took off.  WOW!  That was fun!  Feeling the plane accelerate to well over 100mph and then slowly defy gravity had me smiling.  That smile didn't leave my face for a good 20 minutes as I stared out the window and watched the ground get further and further away.  Once we were at cruising altitude I took advantage of the snack service and bought a bag of combos and a can of coke.  For seven freaking dollars.

Munching on the combos did help my ears pop and it's not as though I wasn't aware of the price in advance.  The flight itself was... well it was kind of dull.  The woman sitting next to me dozed or talked to her friends across the aisle.  The guys in front of me seemed to be working on a rap but were quiet enough to not be annoying.  I read.

Descending and landing weren't nearly as exciting as taking off, but was still a nice new experience.  Finding my way out of the airport was damned annoying.  I was texting the friend picking me up and ended up walking all around the terminal trying to figure out where he was.

So... that's flying.  It's cool.  I certainly won't worry about it in the future and have nothing but nice things to say about flying with Spirit.

The days spent with my friend were relaxing and enjoyable.  We really didn't 'do' anything... we just hung out.  He showed me around a bit but we never ended up in downtown Dallas.  The 'burbs are just a big stinking whole of suburbia.  The vast majority of the housing developments have gone up in the past 15 years so they ALL look alike.  We even passed several in various stages of construction.  The highway system around Dallas is freaking ridiculous.  When highways meet they go over and under each other making the clover leaves rise up like skycrapers.  I swear some of these ramps were 100 feet in the air.

And maybe it's just me, but I found it fairly disrespectful that the 'President George Bush' highway is a toll road.  I'm used to the 'named' highways around Detroit and Chicago... the Kennedy, the Ford, the Eisenhower... all being free roads.  And they don't need to have 'President' in front of their names.  Is anyone going to forget that George Bush was the president?  I may not have enjoyed nor supported his presidency but I  would still offer him respect.

A couple things we did do were go to the gun range and a cigar shoppe.  The cigar shoppe was wonderful.  En Fuego was it's name and if you enjoy a casual environment with a good selection of cigars in the greater Dallas area I couldn't recommend them with any more praise.  Sitting down, lighting up a stogie and kicking back in comfortable chairs is an experience that I'd treasured in the past and had almost forgotten how enjoyable it could be.

The gun range was fun and annoying in equal measure.  If their attitude is anything to go by then I'm in a firm minority of enjoying guns AND respecting the position of gun control.  I can understand having pro gun statements and propaganda around these places but do they all really need a clock counting down the days until President Obama leaves office?  When chatting with them, do all the people working there need to badmouth the administration and claim that you had better buy more ammo as "they're going to make us stop selling it soon".....

Desert Eagle .50 vs 9mm Glock

Bullshit.  Absolute Bullshit.

But I nodded at their request and ignored them as best I could.  I wasn't there to debate a guy wearing a desert eagle .50 cal on his hip about the nuances of gun control.

If yo don't know, a Desert Eagle .50 is a hand cannon.  We were there shooting a rather large CZ 75 9mm gun and it looks like a toy when compared to a 50 cal.

Anywho... we put on our eye and ear protection and got into the shooting range.  We put up a standard circled target (the inner colored area is the size of a human heart according to the 50 year old woman who set us up), sent it down about 15 yards, loaded up and I went first.  Now I haven't shot a hand gun for about three years.  Total I may have put about 100 rounds through all handguns, and no more than 20 through any single gun.  Out of the 15 rounds I put down range I got 12 into the inner circle (size of a human heart).  My friend who has put thousands of rounds through various guns got all of his shots (beyond a few errant shots) in a 2 inch circle.

In other words, this is an amazing gun.  It's VERY heavy so it wouldn't be a great gun to carry around (not that I'm looking for a gun to wear on my hip anywhere outside of a range), but that extra weight and basic design leads to an incredibly accurate gun.  It was fun enough that we ended up putting a couple boxes worth of ammo down range (about 250 rounds).  I thought it was a fun way to spend a couple hours but my friend went on and on about how impressed he was with my accuracy and consistency.  He even posted our targets onto a shooting forum he frequents and got me even more praise.

On Independence day we didn't do anything really special.  We took the kids out to a park and watched them play for a couple hours.  It's almost painful to watch his kids play.  'The Boy' is 4 years old while 'The Girl' is only 2 and a half.  But she's already far more vocal and social than he is.  We've all suspected it, but upon moving down to Dallas the kids had to get tested so that they could start attending school.

The Boy is autistic.  They say it's too early to predict how 'bad' he will be when he grows up but they are giving him some therapy already.  I wanted to learn more, but it was obviously painful for my friends to talk about, so I just let it go and comforted them.  Thankfully my friends are incredibly loving parents and treat their son with nothing but love and respect.

She didn't want me to leave

The rest of the time was spent 'hanging out'.  We'd chat over morning coffee and bagles.  We'd chat while the kids ran about and played.  We'd chat while I stepped out for a smoke.  We'd chat over making lunch.  We'd chat while the kids watched television.  We'd chat over dinner.  We'd chat while some movie played on the TV and the kids went to sleep.   And then we'd do it all over again.

The Girl was particularly fond of me.  I didn't know that I had made any impression on her, but she fawned over me the entire time I was there.  She loves being read to, but neither of her parents were given an opportunity... she wanted me to read to her.  When she wanted to be picked up, she wanted me to do it.  She would deny her parents' requests to eat while at the same time start eating when I asked her too.  You can imagine how she reacted when I told her I had to leave.

She bawled and bawled and bawled.

Throughout my last day there I was bombarded by changes to my flight.  It kept getting delayed followed by the delay getting reduced.  Instead of taking off at the scheduled 7:50pm, we departed at nearly 10pm.  Throughout every delay notification (through email, their website and Google flights), they kept saying that we should arrive at least 1 hour before the scheduled departure... so I sat around DFW airport for three hours.

When I finally got to my seat, the person I was going to sit next to asked if I would switch with her boyfriend who was sitting right behind her.  It meant trading a window seat for an aisle seat, but hey I know I'd rather sit next to my girlfriend.  So I traded and got situated.  As they closed the door and everyone was seated, karma smiled down at me... no one was sitting next to me!  So not only could I switch over and still get the window seat, I had an empty space for my coke, water, and combos (another freaking $7).

My arrival was of course also delayed so instead of my brother, I was picked up by my sister in law.  I like my sister in law because she's married to my brother and the mother of my niece and nephews.  There really isn't any other reason to like her.  Her driving is particularly annoying as she wont' use the cruise control at night and she weaves her huge Traverse from one side of the lane to the other as if she were drunk.  And God forbid she feels the need to look over at me as I swear she'll just drive us off the road whenever he eyes aren't on the road.

All in all it was a fun vacation.  I of course regret having to go back to work today, but I'm sure I'll get back into the swing of things there in no time.  And as my experience with Spirit was good (well... good enough with all the delays), I'll soon be searching for tickets back down to Dallas.   Next VayCay is coming up in August!