Ridiculous Travel Weekend – Day 1

Today was day one of my ridiculous weekend of travel. So far, so good, though there is still time for things to go wrong as I’m only on flight number one. But overall things are good.

I started in NYC this morning and hopped on a bus for the ride down to Philadelphia. It turns out that many flights are much less expensive out of Philly than NYC, so even with a ride to Philly I save money on the flying. Plus, in theory, the chances for upgrades on Continental flights out of Philly are pretty good. But more on that later.

I planned on going to Philly early to meet up with a friend down there and finally have my first real Philly Cheese Steak. I previously wrote about the BoltBus service and this time I took MegaBus, just to compare. They are basically the same and pick up/drop off about the same places at both ends of the trip. On this trip the WiFi did not work, which was annoying, but hardly the end of the world on the quick ride.

So I got to Philly and we headed over to Tony Luke’s for an authentic cheese steak. My order was the same as I’d get anywhere else – provolone with – and, well, it was a good cheese steak. It was not an earth shattering or life changing experience. I actually thought that the meat was a bit dry and bland. But it was pretty good.

After cheese steaks we had a bit of time to kill so we drove down to the end of the Philadelphia runway under the approach path and hung out for an hour or so, snapping shots of the planes coming in to the airport. It was a little too early for the big planes to be coming in from Europe and the grey skies made exposing the shots a bit harder, but I still got a couple decent pictures out of it. Plus, I didn’t get arrested while wandering among the light stanchions that are used to guide the planes in, so that was a bonus.

I thought that I had a decent chance for an upgrade on this flight as my previous flights out of Philly have been easy to upgrade on. Today’s flight, however, could not be farther from that experience. There were about 40 people on the waitlist, and I was in the high teens or low twenties; I stopped checking as it was depressing me. So I’m sitting in my exit row seat and planning my next move.

The layover in Houston gives me about 2.5 hours of time to hit up the Presidents Club with a couple buddies and do what I can to make up for the lack of drinking on thin flight before heading off to my onward connection, where I will also be sitting in coach.

More to come tomorrow as I zigzag my way across the west coast, from The Cowboy (John Wayne Airport) to actual cowboys (Oklahoma City).