The Flight Home

In the past eleven years, I have been on an airplane twice, and both of those times were business trips in the past six months. Air travel hasn't changed much since that time: you still have to check in your luggage, sit around and wait until you can board the plane, and sit in seats that are too small. If the person in front of you happens to recline their seatback, you have even less room.

Denver Airport

Meals are rarely served on flights, even those that occur during normal mealtimes. Everything that is served has a price tag on it. And as my luck would have it, I either end up sitting right on top of the wing, with limited visibility, or I have the aisle seat where I can't see anything! Okay, so there are advantages to having an aisle seat--you can get up to go to the very small lavatory without climbing over people. (On one flight, I had a window seat and both of my seat-mates were sleeping when I had to go to the bathroom. Patience is a virtue!)

There are, however, some changes that are very noticeable. For example, security is tighter than it used to be. You have to take off your shoes as well as any metal items, all of which will be scanned by the x-ray machines. Family members can no longer enter the boarding area to wait with you until your flight is boarded. With most airlines now charging fees for checking luggage into the cargo hold of the aircraft, more people are cramming all of their traveling items into smaller suitcases that are bulging at the seams and then trying to stuff them into the overhead bins above the seats. I think that if the plane were to crash, we would all be knocked unconscious by the falling luggage before we ever hit the ground!

Headquarters of Corrections

Corporation of America

Sunset over Denver Airport

Trip to Nashville

I recently had the opportunity to visit the beautiful city of Nashville, Tennessee, since that is where our company is headquartered. I was sent to Nashville to attend training for Public Information Officers. That's a fancy way of saying facility spokesperson. There were eight of us from various states across the country: Idaho, Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma and Mississippi. We became a very close-knit group in a very short period of time.

Nashville was experiencing a cold front, dropping temperatures down to thirty degrees the first day we arrived, and it remained cold for the duration of our stay. That really wasn't an issue, since the only sights I saw were the inside of the airport, the inside of the hotel, the inside of our company's headquarters, and the inside of the shuttle van that took us to and from work every day. Oh, yes, and the inside of the restaurant we went to one evening. (Did I happen to mention that we saw Tim McGraw at the restaurant?!)

The hotel, Embassy Suites-Vanderbilt, was awesome: they provided a free continental breakfast to surpass anything that I have ever seen in a hotel. Pancakes, waffles, sausage, bacon, scrambled eggs, cereals, toast, pastries, and omelets made-to-order. The hotel had a two-story waterfall that cascaded into the lobby area. The glass elevators looked out over the 11-story building from the inside. Very spectacular!

My room was a two-room suite: a living-room with sofa, lounge chair, worktable, and kitchenette and a separate bedroom with a king-size bed. It was HUGE! The view from the bedroom was breathtaking as it looked out over the city of Nashville. I saw buildings and places that I wished that I had time to visit.

The training was very informative and I learned to shed some of my shyness. (Yes, people, I really am a shy person.) I had to give a media statement, a press release, and a television interview, all of which was video-taped. In addition, those who were attending the training with me took turns being reporters as well as the public information officer. In the middle of my television interview, the president of our company walked in and sat down to listen. I could feel the pressure! I feel that I did very well, and I even put my training to use the first day I got back to work, having to give interviews with a local newspaper.

The trip back home was very long. After already working half a day to finish up the training, my flight wasn't scheduled to leave until 3:00 p.m. and then I had a 4-1/2 hour layover in Denver. It was going to be a long night. I finally arrived back home at 11:40 p.m., but it was nearly 1:00 a.m. the next morning before I went to bed.

At the Nashville airport, I couldn't clear the metal detector, so I was ushered into a glass cubicle where I was pat-searched and scanned with a handheld metal detector. Alas, it was my artificial knee that was setting off the metal detector. The wait at the Denver airport was extremely long, so I spent time eating, shopping, taking photographs, and reading.

In case you've never flown Frontier Airlines, every plane has an animal mascot. The mascot is painted on the tail, on the wingtip, and a poster hangs at the entrance to the plane. Frontier Airlines' motto is: "A Whole Different Animal." Hence the animal names. I flew on "Stan the Ram", "Hector the Otter", and "Clover the Fawn". I don't know what the first one was that I flew on because I didn't realize there was an animal theme until I got on the second flight.

Every seat in the plane has it's own television screen. Of course, you have to pay for it, but it is satellite television with many channels to choose from. They also serve the usual beverage service and snack foods which, of course, you have to pay for. (It was very strange, though, because I only had to pay for drinks/snacks on the flights going TO Nashville; the flights coming back FROM Nashville, the drinks/snacks were free. I don't quite understand that.)

As Dorothy said in the Wizard of Oz, "there's no place like home." I love to travel, but I love to be at home more.