Live from Anaheim 2006 - Part 2

[Tannerman]

As I wrote before, yesterday we visited Disneyland. And it rained. But let me backup a little.

Karl and his puppet, Chuck

On Sunday, January 1, my boss... Karl Bastian (the Kidologist and founder of Kidology), his wife Sara, and I flew out of Midway Airport. Yes, the same Midway that recently had a fatal aircraft incident. Midway is the older of Chicago's two airports and is completely surrounded by commercial and residential development. Until O'Hare opened in the 1950s, Midway was the world's busiest airport.

Aerial view of Midway Airport
(Source: Wikipedia.com)

Midway is a big hub for Southwest Airlines, an airline I had never flown. Southwest is "open seating," which means you don't have seat assignments. It's more like "first come, first served." We were able to get 3 seats all together towards the back of the plane without a problem.

Our flight was rather long, with a stopover in my favorite city (not), Kansas City, MO. I hate Kansas City. Our flight was pretty uneventful. Actually, the captain was really nice about alerting us regarding turbulence and such. Overall, I was thankful with the Southwest experience. However, as another indicator regarding how yucky Kansas City is... as we were about to land, our jet quickly fired the thrusters and pulled out of the landing. We looped around again... as we were informed by the captain that "something was on the runway." Say what? What the heck is wrong with the folks who run the Kansas City airport?

Arriving at LAX

The flight from Kansas City to Los Angeles seemed to take forever. But I read a few books, killed time by listening to our iPod, and watched a few episodes of Seinfeld on the laptop until the battery died. I'm not a fan of flying. Karl entertained a young girl a few rows behind us by decorating his barf bag as a hand puppet. She did the same and they had a fun time. Especially when he named his puppet Chuck. ("What's up, Chuck?")

It was interesting to note the abundance of video iPods on the plane. I think Apple has another winner there. They seem great for flying, aside from the short battery life. If you had a backup battery with you on a long flight, you'd be set.

We arrived at LAX very late. It took quite a while to get our luggage as well. But eventually we were picked up by Karl's cousin and headed to their place for the night. Where we got to bed late. To head to Disneyland the next day. But that's another post!

P.S. For those of you who are interested in another perspective on our trip, make sure you visit Karl's blog at PastorKarl.com.

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