I woke early this morning, quickly and quietly gathering my items, most of which were already packed away. Pulling my phone out, I noticed that I had a missed call and voice mail. Looking at the number, I recognized it from my travels earlier in the week as the Delta “your life just got a little more stressful” hotline. Sure enough, my morning flight had been delayed until noon and my routing now goes through Salt Lake rather than Minneapolis. I decided to go to the airport anyways, hopeful that the plane would be ready sooner, but I think the delay had more to do with too few passengers than other issues.
On the ride over the hotel shuttle driver quickly struck up conversation, starting with the colder than average morning. That prompted me to look at the local and home temps on my phone, 56° and 27° respectively. The driver asked me where I was from and if the weather in Montana is cold. Yes, yes it is, for two-thirds of the year. He then made the (il)logical conversational jump to informing me about the local “gay bar,” to which he would ferry people to on occasion as a hotel transport driver, he even went in once on the urging of his girlfriend at the time. Quite an odd exchange that then turned as abruptly as it had started to family, then gambling, then drunken bicycle riding. I don’t mention this to make fun of the gentleman, but more to highlight the conversational willingness I’ve discovered in my short stint in the South. While crass and definitely not politically correct, his conversation is far more earnest than I have come to expect in the other areas of the country that I have visited.
Once at the airport, I had to wait for a while for some more TSA staff to arrive so I could go through security. The Shreveport Regional Airport is split into two halves, Delta on one side and other regional carriers on the other, with a checkpoint for each half. There is a small cafe/bar on each end and a full service diner in the middle. Kind of an odd setup considering they had more than enough room to put the security checkpoint in the middle of the atrium just before the split to go to either end of the terminal. I was able to watch the sunrise over the airfield and decided to pull out the camera and take a few shots.
And now I wait, hopefully no more delays come my way.
