Welcome to San Diego!!

[SteveDallas]

I have now arrived in sunny San Diego for a conference that starts tomorrow. Whew, what a trip.

Well the first bit was when I got up at 5AM to go for my 7:30 flight. Disgusting, but it was either that, take an evening flight & get to San Diego at 11PM (with my first seminar at 8AM the next morning), or take a flight with a layover and add a good 3 hours to the travel time.

The view out the window waiting to leave Philadelphia....



We actually left the ground at 7:35AM... not bad. All appeared to be going well.




However, about an hour and a half into the flight (or so? I wasn't keeping close track) the captain came on and said there was a problem with an oxygen tank valve, and it was not serious, but that we'd be landing in Indianapolis in about 20 minutes to fix it. So a bit later, we've made a big curve to come around, and based on my meager experience plus the original time estimate I'm thinking it's time to land.

But no, the captain comes back and says while we were getting ready to make our approach they talked it over with the folks back home and determined they could turn the repair around faster in Pittsburgh because US Air has a bigger maintenance shop and more mechanics there. So we turned around and landed in Pittsburgh....




where we all stayed on the plane (an Airbus A320, and it was full) for about 45 minutes while they fixed things up, and took off again.


OK, I admit I don't know where these two are, except somewhere between Pittsburgh and San Diego.







And finally to my hotel room... after landing "only" 2 1/2 hours behind schedule.