July 19-20, 2010: Travel by car, plane, bus

I learned the ABIA (Austin Bergstrom International Airport) looks about the same at 8am as it does at 1pm. I find it depressing not that I know this information, but that I learned it during the same day.

I arrived at the airport with more stuff than I wanted and less stuff then I needed. I would discover this during the day as I went searching for the computer to discover that I had the cords, cables, and everything I needed to make the little Macbook work... except the Mac. I thought I had left it on the bed... turns out it was worse... I left it in the car. I thought of mailing the cables home from New York, but then figured I had no idea how to do that, so they took a trip to the Arctic with me.

At the Austin airport, I checked in at the kiosk and got better seats on the Oslo flight. Checking in is one of those things that just didn't quite happen the night before. For the Newark-Oslo flight I moved from 28A to 14A. The 14-row was previously reserved for upgrading - more legroom, closer to the cabin front... now it was just open. 14A and 14B were open, 14C was unavailable. I figured closer seat, more legroom, and a possible open seat was better than the back.

Security was relatively painless - removing Arctic snow boots inconspicuously is a bit of a challenge, but the FFA officials just smiled like they had seen it all before (which when I asked them... they actually hadn't). They kept making announcements in the airport about staying with your bags and suspicious persons would be checked out - I was shocked they didn't tag me with my coats, hats, stuffed hippo, and snow boots.

At the airport I made a last blitz of phone calls before heading on board. Two Indian women would be my travel companions. They were headed back to India after a visit to the family in Texas. The middle aged daughter was helping her elderly mother who spoke limited English.

Becoming increasingly tired of the captain saying "cross check" and "we'll be just another minute," I closed my eyes for the first time in over a day and took a nap. I woke up about half an hour later, glanced out my window and thought: 1) Wow! We've landed, that was a really short flight. 2) Wait a sec, that's the same truck that was out there when we left Austin. 3) If that's the same truck and that's the same gate.... then we must still be in Austin. Turning to my companion on the right, I asked incredulously... "have we left Austin?" She looked at me strange and said, "No." A few minutes later, our captain came on and said, "Looks like maintenance needs at least another hour, everyone can get off, but take your stuff." Lumbering the carry-on bags and boots, I followed everyone out. The counter was packed with people trying to rearrange flights. I grabbed food from the Austin restaurants (Salt Lick and Mangia) and made more phone calls.

We reboarded the flight, took off, and landed in Newark several hours later than expected and with weather patterns disrupting the Newark flights. We had to wait a while for our gate to open.

At the airport, I had the flight attendants hold the armadillo and hippo for photo shoot. They obliged, but thought it a bit strange. On board, I removed my footwear shoving them in the bin up top shrugging to the other passengers saying, "snow boots, they're hot" and got chuckles. I watched the plane fill and still nobody claimed 14b or 14c.

Half an hour after the captain turned off the fasten seat belt sign, I figured I had given the cabin enough time to rearrange their seats and claim 14c. I scootched over to 14b and had a great flight. I had three seats, my blue Magellan inflate neck pillow, three Continental pillows and blankets. I also had three screens to watch movies, flight info, and play games on. The only thing first class had that I didn't was better food. I napped, watched, and played games the whole time. Who knew that Arsenic and Old Lace went so well with Ice Age!

Landing in Oslo a few hours late, I wanted the trip to start. Collecting my luggage, I noticed many passengers in tank tops and flip flops. I once more felt really out of place.

Turning on the cell phone was equally unreal. The phone had changed from Central to Eastern while in Newark, but wouldn't convert to Norweigian time at all. I would have to add six hours for local time or subtract one hour for home time during the trip - or so it looked.

Information helped direct me to the bus loop where I would catch Bus28 into the city and friends.