{"id":4498,"date":"2012-01-20T18:00:03","date_gmt":"2012-01-20T23:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/debslunch.com\/debslunchblog\/?p=4498"},"modified":"2012-01-20T18:02:09","modified_gmt":"2012-01-20T23:02:09","slug":"the-joy-of-travel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/debslunch.com\/debslunchblog\/the-joy-of-travel\/","title":{"rendered":"The joy of travel"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m in Dallas for the librarians’ conference<\/a>. On the way, I was stuck in the Denver airport for about an extra hour – Frontier airlines seemed to have lost our pilot, so my plane that was to have taken off at 1:05 didn’t leave until more like 2:30. And why I had to go from Madison WI to Dallas TX by way of Denver is a mystery only Frontier knows the answer to – a symptom of our shrinking airline market – the airlines are all buying each other, so as a consumer, I have less choices of when and how I want to get anywhere. The plane just sat at the gate with its cute little raccoon tail & all. The advantage to the delay is that I got enough work done on my online course<\/a> so I could send a welcome email to students, telling them a little about what to expect when the course opens on Monday the 23rd. <\/p>\n

And I got to do nature photography of the birds that live on gate A30 in the Denver airport.<\/p>\n

I rode the train into Dallas, which took about 2 hours – 2 buses from the airport to the train station, and then the train ride itself – but when I stepped off at the final station, I could see my hotel. When I got to the hotel lobby, the line to get checked in was ridiculous, so I left my bags with the bellman, and went for a drink. Even that was little difficult – had to go to the wine bar in the chop house, because the sports bar was too full. And when I opened my credit card wallet to pay for the wine, one of my cards was missing. After some minor panic, I figured out that I used that card to pay my bag fee when I checked in for my flight when I was still in PJs at home, and eventually Mark found the card in the pocket of my sweatshirt, that was hanging on the bathroom door, safe at home.<\/p>\n

I did a little searching for pizza, but the better sounding places didn’t deliver, so I went with the bellman’s suggestion – and got a roasted corn pizza and an iceberg lettuce salad for about $15 – and 2 room service beers for another $16. And watched The Sting<\/a> on TV. Pretty standard for\u00a0 a first-night-at-conference hotel night, except usually I’m with Mark.<\/p>\n

This morning I had to get up 15 minutes early to shave my legs – it’s too warm in Texas for leggings or tights. And I did my Rodney Yee<\/a> a.m. yoga DVD, too. I found the closet Starbucks – subterranean, in a shopping mall under a big bank building – 2 ways to get there – from the bank plaza or enter the parking ramp of another building across the street. And I took pictures of the leftover giant Christmas tree ornaments that are still decorating the lawn outside my hotel – sitting on brown sod.<\/p>\n