Return

So I'm back.
I gave a brief explanation of my hotel room. It was pretty nice. Good wide screen, plasma tv. Good stuff.

Conference was pretty interesting, at times. There was a couple panels on Federal Rules that were boring, as I'm Canadian and the US federal initiatives are useless to me. A panel or two turned into essentially ads for a company as well, which was a bit of a downer, but the conference organizers are aware of that, and are trying to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Trip back to Saskatoon sucked though. I got to Ohare around 3 hours before my flight, due to when the conference ended, and shuttle times and such. Not that big a deal. Then my flight got delayed by 30 minutes. No big deal, I had a 2 hour layover in Calgary, so I wasn't to worried about time. Just meant I had an extra 30 min to kill at the airport. Then it got delayed another 30 minutes. And another 30 minutes. All said and done, my flight was delayed 3 hours. Looks like I won't be making my transfer.

Sure enough, I get to Calgary (around midnight), and there is NO ONE around. My plane is gone, I run around trying to find someone from Air Canada or United Air to help me. I finally, after about 30 minutes of hunting catch a Air Canada rep, who lets me know I'm already booked on a flight in the morning, and gives me a phone number for some company that will help me find a hotel room in Calgary. I call the number. No hotel rooms, but try again in 15 minutes and we'll try to find something. So I start calling some hotels while I'm waiting 15 minutes. Now I need a shuttle or a cab or something too, and since it's already 1ish, I want something close, and preferably cheap. I can't find anything. The company that specializes in finding hotel rooms can't find anything. Awesome.

So 2 rolls around, I'm tired, as that's when I usually have my core. I'm still at the stupid airport. I say screw it. It'll just sleep here. Bundle all my bags up as a pillow, and find a decent bench to crash on.

I don't have an alarm clock or anything, but I figure I'll be ok. When I don't have a clock, from experience, I get up around 7 at the latest. But I wasn't comfortable. It was an airport bench, so I toss and turn a fair bit before falling asleep. No idea when, but it was late. Well, I must have been tired, as I woke up, and the airport seemed busy, and lo and behold, it was 7. My flight was scheduled to leave at 7:40. I was on the wrong side of security. I at least had my boarding pass from Air Canada the night before. But I hadn't checked any luggage. So I look at my bags, and figure, I can get away with taking it as carry on... I hope. And rush to Security. Security was actually really fast, faster than Saskatoon security going to Chicago. So I get to my gate in about 15 minutes, they aren't even boarding. Sweet. I start jamming my bags into that carry one check metal basket thing to see if I can get away with it. I barely can. I cheer quietly inside.

I didn't get to do any of the touristy things I was intending to in Chicago. The day of the White Sox game I was thinking about attending was rainy, and I didn't want to sit in the rain to watch baseball. It also didn't help that at the end of everyday at the conference there was a sponsored cocktail hour or two. That meant I wasn't ready to leave the hotel until 7-8ish, and usually reasonably intoxicated from the free drinks. SO I watched the game 5 in the playoffs at the hotel bar, and spent a fair bit of time there. Wasn't too bad. There was a couple cute bartenders I had some good chats with. Enjoyable.