Well, it looks like my last post, Random Stop?, attracted the most comments I’ve had on a post since I wrote about Ernest Angley.  Writing about a hot-button issue like illegal immigration and wondering aloud if the police were racial profiling at a trafic stop AND getting a link from Esbee will do that.  I haven’t responded to most of the comments because I’ve been working in Chicago since Sunday night and I’m just now getting the chance to sit in front of my computer for the first time since then.  I’m sitting in O’Hare waiting for my flight back to GSO and honestly I’m too tired to respond effectively.  I’ll do it tomorrow when my brain’s a little less fuzzy.

O’Hare’s fun for people-watching but not much else.  The internet connection I paid $6.95 for is agonizingly slow.  The same people who are fun to watch are often also rude, and many smell a little ripe.  Maybe that’s the food court.  Anyway, it’s a nuthouse.  That makes for a great contrast with the GSO terminal, which is so quiet you could hold a meditation session in one of the 80% of gates that aren’t used at any given time. 

Here’s how quiet GSO is.  My flight out on Sunday night was scheduled to take off at 7:50 p.m.  It was delayed an hour so I was hanging out in the little Sam Adams bar near the gates on the United side of the terminal. Tiger was struggling down the back-9 at the US Open and I was enjoying the show with about 10 of my fellow passengers.  Unfortunately the bar shut down at 8:00 (8:00!) so we all had to leave, but luckily the TV was left on while the cleaning crew was doing their thing so we watched through the security gate.  The cleaning crew finished right after Tiger teed off on the 18th and they shut off the TV so we all returned to the gate and a guy did a play-by-play while listening to the broadcast on his iPod.  Classic.

I think we were the last flight out since the approximately 30 people on our flight were the last people in the terminal and the gate agent was so desperate to get rid of us he helped clean the plane when it arrived from some exotic locale, Minneapolis I believe.  I think he had a party to get to. 

I love flying out of GSO, but I wonder how long it can survive with so few passengers.  Normally I’d mark up the experience to an anomaly, but the airport has been this sedate all four years I’ve been using it regularly.  Sadly, it only seems to be getting worse.

Oh well.  No more travel for a while, which is nice.  I’ve met lots of interesting people over the last week and a half, which makes the travel more than bearable, but I’m looking forward to being home for a while.  Not sure if Celeste and the kids feel the same, but they’re stuck with me so I think we’ll all adjust.