Day 1: San Diego to Pensacola
By JoeBruin88. Filed in Career and Travels |Tags: Career, Marines, Pensacola, Travels
6:00 AM (PST)
Surprisingly, there is no wireless connection here at this particular gate in the airport. So the first part of this entry is being written in Microsoft Word. I probably have about half an hour before I have to board the plane. Having only had two hours of sleep, the alarm going off at 4:00 AM was not a welcome sound. This is my second trip to Pensacola. And it’s my baby’s first trip outside of San Diego (baby = Apple PowerBook G4 laptop). I’m starting to feel drowsy. I think this is it for now until I get on the plane. Maybe I’ll watch a DVD or just read and listen to music—I haven’t decided yet.
3:50 PM (CST) – Pensacola, Florida
The plane ride to Houston was only 2 hours and 23 minutes, which seems like a relatively short time to me. Unfortunately, I was assigned a center seat, which totally sucks. But the good part is that two skinny people sat next to me. The woman sitting on my right was from Houston, here in San Diego visiting with her sister. She was somewhat talkative and friendly. I was planning on sleeping since I am so tired, but not only did she keep talking to me, the airline I was flying decided to show a movie that I was interested in watching, “Spanglish.” I think it’s Adam Sandler’s latest flick.
The movie, which took the duration of the flight, was kinda interesting, but it’s not the sort of movie that I would want to see again. It was more of a romantic comedy, but not really romantic and not that funny compared to his other classic comedies. In any case, the in-flight movie game me the chance to test out my new noise-canceling headphones, the Sennheiser PXC 250. These headphones are amazing. They block out all unwanted noise from the outside environment when the noise-canceling feature is turned on. It took awhile to get used to the loud volume of the movie; I don’t think there was a volume control on my seat and none on the headphones. The movie audio was crystal clear; I couldn’t even hear the flight attendant ask me what I wanted to drink without removing them. The only thing that I might dislike about these headphones is the slight hissing sound produced by the noise-canceling device. But other than that, they are perfect for travel. They are keepers, especially for the upcoming trip to Greece.
The plane landed in Houston very soon after the conclusion of the movie at about 12:00 PM (CST). The Houston airport is HUGE. I had less than an hour to catch the connecting flight to Pensacola. It was located in a different terminal from where I landed, so I had to take the airport train to the next terminal. Unfortunately, I did not get pictures of the train, but it kinda looks like the ones in the Denver airport, except it runs on monorail-like tracks and goes much slower.
Houston was humid. I arrived at my next gate. And they were offering a deal for one person to skip the Pensacola flight at 1:05 PM for a ticket voucher good for anywhere in the world where Continental Airlines flies. I asked if they flew to Australia (my cousin’s upcoming wedding), but they did not. So I declined.
The plane I flew was a smaller jet. And I had a seat all the way in the back of the plane, next to the jet engines and the lavatory. Additionally, an Indian guy sat next to me across the aisle and he had really bad B.O. I slept for most of the flight.
The flight attendant on this flight was probably the laziest one I have ever seen. Before the flight took off, she locked the lavatory so people would think it was occupied. She had to unlock at the beginning of the flight when someone had to go to the bathroom. I guess she thought that since the flight was only an hour long that nobody would need to use the lavatory. When she was serving drinks, I guess someone was giving her a hard time, so this flight attendant started rolling her eyeballs, like a stuck-up high school or middle school girl with a bad attitude. I asked for a ginger ale and water. I couldn’t finish the water, so when she came back with the trash bag, I still had some water left. She told me, “You can hang on to that a little longer, if you want.” Thank you very much; I don’t want to hang on to it. When she came back again, I threw the water away in her trash bag.
Arriving in Pensacola at about 2:30 PM (CST), picking up my luggage, and securing the rental car, I made it to the lovely Holiday Inn Express where I stayed last time one-half hour earlier than I wanted to. If I commute 10 hours, I get the full per diem rate of $35. But being the honest guy that I am, I decided to check in even though there was still a half hour left to earn more money. When I checked in, most of the rooms were not done being cleaned! So here I am writing this report of my first day adventures in Bennigan’s a restaurant/bar, eating some appetizers as I wait for my room to be cleaned. So I will get the full per diem rate after all because it’s based traveling door-to-door. I checked in, but they were not allowed to give me my key so I can’t even get into the room yet. As I finish this story, it’s almost time to go back to the hotel since I’ve waited about an hour already,
Since it’s kinda late in the afternoon, I don’t feel like going to see Pensacola Beach as I had planned. I will probably just go tomorrow after work and eat at Flounders restaurant where my MBA colleague Martha recommended.