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For those who can't see locked posts, I spent the past several days visiting family in the Green Bay area, and blogged extensively about it. Since "scan public posts to see who'll be out of town" robbery has been catching on lately, I locked all of those posts while I was gone, but now I'm unlocking them. Last day blog and links to the other days behind cut.
(If any of these links don't work, gimme a few minutes, I'm going back and unlocking them after making this post.)
And now the travel day back to Manhattan, woo, exciting.
Had a fairly relaxed morning, my flight was late enough I didn't need to get up early, but early enough that there was no temptation to squeeze one last event into the trip. While Austin-Straubel International Airport (code GRB) is pretty small, Frontier is pretty incompetent so I decided to arrive 90 minutes ahead of my flight. In the car on the way over, I finished the last of what was two pounds of cheese curds I ate over the time spent in Wisconsin. All in all, despite impressing relatives with my restraint in eating, I almost definitely ate too much, and even the loads of walking on Sunday probably didn't "pay" for it. I wouldn't be surprised if I'm over the 200 lbs mark tomorrow morning. Eating today was erratic in any case, since neither step of the flight served proper meals (and they charged for snacks other than the signature cookies).
As expected, the check-in line at the terminal was rather slow, because the staffers were overburdened and multitasking and several were clearly not fully trained on the system they were expected to use. Frontier makes it hard for its employees to do a good job. Fortunately, once the one trouble spot at the front cleared up, the fact that only one terminal was working (the other had several confused employees clustered around it trying to make something work) wasn't a big problem and I was checked in ten minutes after arrival. I poked around the gift shop and the cheese shop for a few minutes, then went to security.
Now, my original plan had been to get in my morning walk by pacing back and forth between the two concourses. Hitch one, each concourse has its own security, a fact that I'd failed to notice on Thursday. Hitch two, my carry-on was sent through several extra checks because they couldn't figure out what was in it, and the checking included swabbing for explosives residue. So...I decided that pacing back and forth in the small concourse, while good enough for exercise, might draw negative attention and result in more invasive searches. Fortunately GRB has free wifi, so I spent the time poking about online instead.
Anyway, we boarded on time, and left the ground precisely at the scheduled time. But the promised 20 minute flight took 30 minutes. I was over a wing, and it was too full to let me switch around like I did on the flight up, so I didn't get to take much advantage of the fairly clear view. At least the small children in the row ahead of me were silent.
I misread the boarding pass for my connecting flight as being a departure of 1:00 instead of boarding at 1:00, so I had a bit of a panic when I couldn't get off the plane until 12:55. While the 35 minutes was plenty of time for my bag to get transferred this time, it wasn't enough time to wait in line at any of the restaurants in the concourse, so lunch ended up being two Balance bars in my backpack and the cookies on the flight. Yeah, my stomach wasn't exactly thrilled.
When I was seated on the also-full flight to KC, the woman holding her infant that was in front of me on the first step was now next to me, but she got shifted to an empty seat next to her husband when someone showed up late. The spot didn't stay open, though, as a late-arrival whose seat was taken by someone else (not the mother and child, it was an unrelated swap) ended up next to me, but he wasn't a problem. For some reason he did get extra cookies, I suppose he also failed to have time to get lunch and requested more cookies...wonder if I could have done so too? Ah well.
We were ten minutes late in leaving the terminal, and clouds were moving in, so the fact I was once again over the wing didn't really matter this time...no view to speak of. When I called my parents later to let them know I arrived safely, I was told my flight jinked around a bit to avoid a storm line...given the trouble I had keeping my soda from drifting off the tray table during some turbulence, I find that eminently plausible. The landing was nearly half an hour late, but my luggage came up with no fuss at all so I ended up leaving the airport only about 10 minutes later than I'd estimated in my planning. I also shaved some time off by not stopping for a late lunch...my stomach was still a little unhappy about things. I did notice some strange bus stops in the "no public allowed" sections behind the scenes of the airport on the shuttle bus routes. Too far from any lot to be used by passengers, even assuming they walked on the grass to get there. My guess is that they're for letting drivers swap out at shift change or lunch breaks.
I remembered to check the odometer before pulling out of the lot, something I'd forgotten to do on arrival: 137 miles from filling up a couple miles from home to the airport parking lot. Parking cost me $36...$6 a day or any fraction thereof (in this case, the fraction being about 5 hours).
I stopped at the Target at Legends, saw a few new toys (Phineas and Ferb action figures, A-Team movie action figures, some new DC action figures I wasn't interested in) but only bought some cheap batteries (on my shopping list) and a soda before getting back on the road around 4. Yeah, just traveling a quarter arc around Kansas City takes more than half an hour. Around this time, it was looking like the threatened storms for the afternoon weren't going to materialize after all (weather.com hour-by-hour as of 10 AM said 40% chance of scattered storms by 3PM in Topeka and 4PM in KC). Just warm (83F) and sunny.
I got to Topeka at 5PM, at which point it turned into just another monthly toy run to Topeka. :) A very successful, if shortened run, though. No Lego blindpacks at the TRU (grabbed a new Mega Blok dragons set that caught my eye back in Appleton), but I got a start on the next stack of gifts for my nieces via some Pop N Swap Polly Pocket sets at TJMaxx (called my sister to see if they already had 'em) plus a Ben10 figure set for myself. Then at Target I got some clearanced Public Enemies figures (Major Force and Black Lightning), a BatB Action League set of Black Lightning and R.Lee Wildcat, and grabbed a DCAU Rogues set for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
liabrown. Oh, and Wendy's "Crispy Chicken Sandwich" is not particularly crispy, but my stomach was willing to accept it.
Waiting for me at home was the Nearly Complete Essential Hembeck Archive Omnibus, which may take me a while to read. Or lift.
ETA: None of my plants died. The two thirstiest ones look a little wilty, but they should bounce back. And the basil didn't even finish all its water.
(If any of these links don't work, gimme a few minutes, I'm going back and unlocking them after making this post.)
- Driving to the airport
- They lost my luggage
- The flight and that night in DePere
- Friday morning in DePere and environs
- Friday afternoon shopping, dinner with the nieces
- Saturday morning and afternoon in Appleton
- Saturday afternoon and evening back in DePere
- Sunday in DePere and Ashwaubenon
- Monday all around the Green Bay Area and back to Appleton
And now the travel day back to Manhattan, woo, exciting.
Had a fairly relaxed morning, my flight was late enough I didn't need to get up early, but early enough that there was no temptation to squeeze one last event into the trip. While Austin-Straubel International Airport (code GRB) is pretty small, Frontier is pretty incompetent so I decided to arrive 90 minutes ahead of my flight. In the car on the way over, I finished the last of what was two pounds of cheese curds I ate over the time spent in Wisconsin. All in all, despite impressing relatives with my restraint in eating, I almost definitely ate too much, and even the loads of walking on Sunday probably didn't "pay" for it. I wouldn't be surprised if I'm over the 200 lbs mark tomorrow morning. Eating today was erratic in any case, since neither step of the flight served proper meals (and they charged for snacks other than the signature cookies).
As expected, the check-in line at the terminal was rather slow, because the staffers were overburdened and multitasking and several were clearly not fully trained on the system they were expected to use. Frontier makes it hard for its employees to do a good job. Fortunately, once the one trouble spot at the front cleared up, the fact that only one terminal was working (the other had several confused employees clustered around it trying to make something work) wasn't a big problem and I was checked in ten minutes after arrival. I poked around the gift shop and the cheese shop for a few minutes, then went to security.
Now, my original plan had been to get in my morning walk by pacing back and forth between the two concourses. Hitch one, each concourse has its own security, a fact that I'd failed to notice on Thursday. Hitch two, my carry-on was sent through several extra checks because they couldn't figure out what was in it, and the checking included swabbing for explosives residue. So...I decided that pacing back and forth in the small concourse, while good enough for exercise, might draw negative attention and result in more invasive searches. Fortunately GRB has free wifi, so I spent the time poking about online instead.
Anyway, we boarded on time, and left the ground precisely at the scheduled time. But the promised 20 minute flight took 30 minutes. I was over a wing, and it was too full to let me switch around like I did on the flight up, so I didn't get to take much advantage of the fairly clear view. At least the small children in the row ahead of me were silent.
I misread the boarding pass for my connecting flight as being a departure of 1:00 instead of boarding at 1:00, so I had a bit of a panic when I couldn't get off the plane until 12:55. While the 35 minutes was plenty of time for my bag to get transferred this time, it wasn't enough time to wait in line at any of the restaurants in the concourse, so lunch ended up being two Balance bars in my backpack and the cookies on the flight. Yeah, my stomach wasn't exactly thrilled.
When I was seated on the also-full flight to KC, the woman holding her infant that was in front of me on the first step was now next to me, but she got shifted to an empty seat next to her husband when someone showed up late. The spot didn't stay open, though, as a late-arrival whose seat was taken by someone else (not the mother and child, it was an unrelated swap) ended up next to me, but he wasn't a problem. For some reason he did get extra cookies, I suppose he also failed to have time to get lunch and requested more cookies...wonder if I could have done so too? Ah well.
We were ten minutes late in leaving the terminal, and clouds were moving in, so the fact I was once again over the wing didn't really matter this time...no view to speak of. When I called my parents later to let them know I arrived safely, I was told my flight jinked around a bit to avoid a storm line...given the trouble I had keeping my soda from drifting off the tray table during some turbulence, I find that eminently plausible. The landing was nearly half an hour late, but my luggage came up with no fuss at all so I ended up leaving the airport only about 10 minutes later than I'd estimated in my planning. I also shaved some time off by not stopping for a late lunch...my stomach was still a little unhappy about things. I did notice some strange bus stops in the "no public allowed" sections behind the scenes of the airport on the shuttle bus routes. Too far from any lot to be used by passengers, even assuming they walked on the grass to get there. My guess is that they're for letting drivers swap out at shift change or lunch breaks.
I remembered to check the odometer before pulling out of the lot, something I'd forgotten to do on arrival: 137 miles from filling up a couple miles from home to the airport parking lot. Parking cost me $36...$6 a day or any fraction thereof (in this case, the fraction being about 5 hours).
I stopped at the Target at Legends, saw a few new toys (Phineas and Ferb action figures, A-Team movie action figures, some new DC action figures I wasn't interested in) but only bought some cheap batteries (on my shopping list) and a soda before getting back on the road around 4. Yeah, just traveling a quarter arc around Kansas City takes more than half an hour. Around this time, it was looking like the threatened storms for the afternoon weren't going to materialize after all (weather.com hour-by-hour as of 10 AM said 40% chance of scattered storms by 3PM in Topeka and 4PM in KC). Just warm (83F) and sunny.
I got to Topeka at 5PM, at which point it turned into just another monthly toy run to Topeka. :) A very successful, if shortened run, though. No Lego blindpacks at the TRU (grabbed a new Mega Blok dragons set that caught my eye back in Appleton), but I got a start on the next stack of gifts for my nieces via some Pop N Swap Polly Pocket sets at TJMaxx (called my sister to see if they already had 'em) plus a Ben10 figure set for myself. Then at Target I got some clearanced Public Enemies figures (Major Force and Black Lightning), a BatB Action League set of Black Lightning and R.Lee Wildcat, and grabbed a DCAU Rogues set for
liabrown. Oh, and Wendy's "Crispy Chicken Sandwich" is not particularly crispy, but my stomach was willing to accept it.Waiting for me at home was the Nearly Complete Essential Hembeck Archive Omnibus, which may take me a while to read. Or lift.
ETA: None of my plants died. The two thirstiest ones look a little wilty, but they should bounce back. And the basil didn't even finish all its water.
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My sister was in Topeka and Manhattan a little while ago. The story's not much more exciting than that, but it was part of a roadtrip from South Carolina.
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Hembeck Omnibus