1. A New Contender for Worst Flight?

There have been some doozies over the years—Nick and I getting stranded in Maryland, our family’s crazy Jacksonville-Raleigh-DC-Detroit-Austin ordeal, having to rent a car at DFW and drive to Tulsa… But man, this one that I’m currently experiencing feels worst yet. For the first time in my life, I spent the entire night in an airport. After a 4-hour delay leaving Greenville, SC due to extreme wind, I arrived in Atlanta with an equally delayed flight back to Austin. But that flight kept getting delayed and never happened. Just as we were about to board at 12:45am they canceled it. We were far from alone, and hotels were sold out. So I decided to just stay overnight. If I slept, it was next to nothing. Maybe 1-5 minutes before I jolted myself back awake. As I write this I still do not know if/when I’ll make it back to Austin, but we’re going on 18 hours of this mess.

2. Email Conference

Oh, right, the reason I am gone in the first place was to attend an email marketing conference in Greenville. It was a great networking opportunity and the team learned a few things too. Greenville is a charming southern city of 70,000, but I’m not quite sure why they decided to have the conference there again.

3. Next Flights

At some point during the night I vowed I would never fly again. And then I came down and said I would never fly again alone with connections. Well, there’s no way that will happen. But I think after this run of horrible luck I will think long and hard about connections. There have been talks of the fantasy baseball gang doing another Fort Myers spring training trip in March which would be me alone and would absolutely require connections, so my vow may only last a couple months.

4. Baseball Trip II

I also want to do a father-son baseball trip to see the Twins on the road with John this season, MLB lockout pending. We had thrown around some ideas like Baltimore, Cleveland, and San Diego. Again, I’m going to have to find something where it’s an easy direct flight. Doing what I’m doing now with a kid in tow would be awful. If I had to guess now—and if the lockout ends before any games are lost—Baltimore looks like a good bet in April. Chilly, probably a small crowd, a new city, and winnable games for the Twins.

5. Wordle Undefeated Streak

Yup, in the middle of the night I got today’s puzzle right on one random ass guess!