Second time's the charm

As if to make up for the shenanigans on Thursday, today's return home from Washington was almost surreally pleasant. The flight took off and landed almost exactly on time, there was no turbulence of note, and the landing was perfect. The only small inconveniences, if you could call them that, were the mislabeled gate information (for a while I thought that there might have been a gate change because, for no apparent reason, the flight listed on the screen was the Alaska Airlines code-share information) and the fact that I paid 12 dollars for a personal pizza and a bottle of water (which cost an obscene $2.69 by itself) at the California Pizza Kitchen in the terminal.

Making things even better, the flight was pretty empty - there were probably 40 people on board including the crew, and no one in my row, which is always nice. I got to have a full can of ginger ale and two packages of snack mix, plus I didn't have to feel smushed in. I'm really not a fan of sitting directly alongside a complete stranger if I can help it, which is why I make certain choices at theaters and on buses and trains, but on a plane there's little you can do. I lucked out on this one. I finished the book I had bought for the trip and then tried to see if I could finish the crossword in the American Way magazine before touchdown, which I did with about a minute to spare (I was literally holding it in my hands, since the tray table was up, writing in the last answers as the plane neared the ground).

Best of all, the Blue Line train dropped me at Addison just in time to catch the 9:40 eastbound 152 bus. Had I been two minutes later, I would have had to wait until 10:04. As it was, I was home by that time. All in all, a great travel experience, possibly making up not just for Thursday but for the mediocrity of the weekend in sports.