Alright...I started the 2nd day of the year with a plane scheduled to leave at 11:20 AM from SAN. It was a 767-300 operated by Delta and seemed like everything was going swell. Adelle and I didn't wake up early for breakfast, but we still grabbed some Breakfast combos from Jack in the Box (Chibatta bfast and sausage jack), dropped off my comforter (dog pissed on it) to the dry cleaners, and then headed to the airport. There didn't look like there was a huge security line, but it was the check in line that was long. Deceiving I tell ya. I didn't want Adelle to spend any money on parking, so she just dropped me off at curbside. It was a long goodbye, but definitely a good one.

When I finally arrived at the counter to checkin, I noticed that the flight was delayed to 12:00PM. So, with about 1.5 hrs to spare, I got some Starbucks inside the terminal and just relaxed for a bit. I met an interesting PhD that brought his parachute rig with him on the plane and he was questioned by the TSA. They actually made him unpack the main chute and repack it. It wasn't a big deal for him really, but it was a good story. He also started telling me some good news in the oncology side of things. WHat he does, etc.

When I got to the gate, it didn't mention anything about a delay, so I was enthusiastic, up until a piece of dot matrix printer paper was posted over the time saying 12:00PM, then it moved to 12:20PM then 12:35PM. All these delays were because of weather at Atlanta. After boarding, the first officier told us that we were 2000 lbs. over weight in fuel and had to get rid of some. That took about 1.5 hours or so. After that, the weather started coming in thick and heavy, but we still managed to position for #1 departure for runway 9...then we pulled off again to the side. Another announcement, "Looks like the winds are favoring runway 27 and we're going to have to taxi back for departure for that runway folks." I felt bad for the flight crew because all the passengers were already fed up. He made up some good time though enroute. It only took us 3 hours and 20 minutes to get to ATL. That's almost 1 whole hour faster than normal! It was awesome.

I had 5 minutes to get to another terminal only to find out that it was delayed for another 30 minutes. I bought some pizza, call up my ride and just relaxed a bit. Thanks Matty P for the ride back to Club Zorlou!

My friend posted some pictures of the both of us enroute to Santa Monica from Carlsbad, CA. Check it out at http://www.livejournal.com/users/thejoj/89071.html. Here just one of the two pics on his site.

Prayers go out to Drew Brees. Good luck on the surgery. You definitely deserve a contract!