Air Travel Blues

Greetings from pitch-dark Northern California, where I’m just ecstatically happy to be awake at 5am. Jet lag sucks.

Other things that suck? Weather delays. We were supposed to arrive at about 1:00 yesterday afternoon, but snow in Chicago screwed that up completely. We spent a good hour and a half sitting on the plane at the gate at O’Hare, where they were down to one working runway, and two working de-icing trucks. This, on top of delays getting into Chicago due to the weather (see “one working runway”) meant that we didn’t get in until 4:00, so rather than spending a leisurely afternoon getting the lay of the land before going to dinner with some of my relatives out here, I barely had time to register for the conference and change my clothes before running out the door.

Still, at least we made it here– I was a little surprised that we got into Chicago, let alone out to Oakland. And dinner last night was terrific.If only my body didn’t insist on being awake in time for my 8:00 EDT class…

The conference I’m here for will see something like 2000 students presenting on their research, which will keep me fairly well occupied. Don’t expect much in the way of blogging.