Good morning from Gate B20 of the Chicago Midway Airport. If you're on the flight crew of the Southwest flight to Buffalo, everyone's looking for you.
I went home for a quick couple of days on Monday and it was fantastic. Did some yardwork, ran some errands, grilled my own dinner (a novel concept), and enjoyed being with my wife (and Rusty, but mostly my wife).
Kids pulling their own luggage in airports never fails to make me laugh. What do they have in their backpacks nowadays that is so important it warrants them carrying it themselves? When I was their age (wow, I really just typed that) I was happy with a Choose Your Own Adventure book and some Micro Machines. A kid just passed me who looked like he's probably racked up more frequent flier miles in the first five years of his life than I've acquired flying across the country for SNC in the past three. I think he was on his iPhone with his board of directors back at the office. Kid you not, his shirt was tucked in. Might as well been wearing loafers and carrying a Brooks Brothers catalog.
Every airport needs a McDonald's within 50 yards of whatever gate I exit on a connection. That Southern Style Chicken Biscuit I just crushed had no chance of survival. Yes, it deserves the capital letters.
I sat next to Subway Jared on my flight home. We've crossed paths with him several times in the past for IU events (he's a fellow alumnus), but I'm more of an acquaintance with him than a friend. Not that he's not friendly. The guy's great, I just don't go back like he and DR do (high school classmates). I recognized him immediately from the mandatory apron and plastic gloves, but didn't know if he gets annoyed with people coming up to him and saying, "Hey, you're the guy from the Subway commercials! Do you have 15 minutes to put whatever you were doing on hold while I talk to you about how much I love Subway? What's up with the meatball sub these days..." I kind of did that scooch your knees together and to the side like you're letting someone into the pew at church on Christmas Eve move and let him into the exit row we were sitting in (yes, I was willing and able to assist in the event of an emergency, but I was just happy to have the extra 4 spacious inches of leg room). I texted Lauren and said "No lie, Subway Jared just sat down next to me on my flight," to which she replied, "Oh my gosh! Tell him you're in Straight No Chaser and get an autograph for me!" to which I replied, "I don't want to bug him, I'm sure people recognize him all the time, I'm just going to let him be," to which she replied, "Tell him you're in Straight No Chaser!" to which I replied, "You already said that," to which she replied, "Who is this?"
Figuring DR would get a kick out of it, I texted him "DR, I figured you'd get a kick of this...I'm sitting next to your boy Subway Jared...didn't want to bug him, but thought I'd let you know" to which he replied, "Just texted him." At this point, I thought "This may get awkward" because we hadn't exchanged words and it had been several minutes full of flurried texting (on both our behalves, which is a great word). He laughed at his phone, which prompted me to understand that DR's text of "Yo, my friend is sitting next to you but didn't want to bug you" had been sent and received. I blurted out, "You're probably going to get a text from Dave Roberts," which to anyone else would have been weird (not that DR's weird, but if they didn't expect to get a text from DR, it would've been weird, you know what I'm saying). Handshakes and small talk ensued from that point forward. I brought him up speed on the show in Atlantic City, while he just kept tossing sliced vegetables and freshly baked bread at me.
I'm getting nervous at this point that I'm sitting at the wrong gate, so I'm going to wrap this up and go check the departure screens. No idea if that Buffalo flight crew made it to the plane. So many scenarios going through my head right now about what could have been delaying them, but that's another blog entirely. Screaming baby, gotta go.
Ryan