I had an early taxi from the apartment I'd been staying in for the last two nights, and I knew it had arrived when I got an automated call at 6.20am telling me my cab was outside. I was given an option - "if you'd like your cab to wait please key in how many minutes you'd like." So as it was 10 minutes early, I keyed in 10. The response was "5 minutes is the maximum" so I keyed in 5. Grrrr.... so a mad dash round the apartment grabbing the last few bits.
The instruction from the housing people was to leave the keys on the hall table and pull the door shut and it's locked. This I did, and as it clicked shut and locked I glanced at my case and realised that I'd not padlocked it. I then had that sick in the stomach feeling as I remembered where the padlock key was. Yes, it was on my keyring with my London house keys, which was on the bedside table, which is now of course inside the apartment with me on the outside and no way to get in....
So I headed off to the airport, cursing the cab for being early and putting me into the tail spin, but thankful I at least had my passport in my bag.
The trip out to O'Hare was busy and took a good 45 minutes - even at 6.30am.
I was flying with JetBlue, so once dropped off at their terminal I printed off my boarding pass and headed through a quiet security. Feeling slightly hungover (again....) I sought out a starbucks and took refuge in a large latte with an extra shot and their yoghurt and granola thing they do. Tasty.
Boarding was announced on time by a great gate agent, who, after his 'official' shpeal went on to invite anyone up who fancied a chat, to talk about the weather and what he'd had for dinner last night!
The plane we were on was a 2 aisle 2 config, and I the seats were a comfy leather affair and each seat had it's own TV. You could purchase headsets for $2 or use your own - which is good rather than being forced to buy the airline. The TV was also impressive - multi channel - and all live, so if you wanted to watch the live CNN news, you could.
However, I didn't get to try any of this as I fell into conversation with the lady sat next to me - she was a Grandmother, had four children and three grandchildren and had been the VP of a major bank - and we had a great time chatting about all sorts of stuff - from the show I work on all the way through to Obama and the health care plan. So the two hours flew by.
Upon arrival we were quickly off and soon in a cab on the way into Boston.
So far - JetBlue have been the most impressive internal flight I've taken on this trip.
