Traveling to NYC

I am sitting here pretty much all alone in Terminal 8 at JFK Airport in New York. I have about 45 minutes until my wife lands here, so I am writing to you all to pass the time a bit. Today's travel day was not the best I have every had. Both difficulties with airports, airline attendant, and a few amateur mistake on my part as well. The good news is that I have finally arrived in New York (3 hours delayed) and only have to wait a little bit for my wife to show up along with my bag.

Before you ask why my wife would have my bag, let me start from the beginning of the day, a day which started much like any other, with my alarm waking me up dark and early at 5:30am. I immediately got up and put on the clothes I had laid out next to my bed the night before. I stumbled in the darkness lit only by my phone out of the bedroom and into the kitchen to heat up a heat pack for my leg and some tea for my belly. This is a pretty typical routine, where I have my tea and breakfast on my couch while surfing
the web on my phone and heating up my hamstring to be ready to run.

Once I finish my tea I go through a few exercises to further warm up and stretch out my legs, and with my early morning grogginess this takes me about 30 minutes to do what should only be 15. But I like to plan ahead, I know I will be a little lazy, even on a day like today when I am scheduled to fly to NYC for the TCS NYC Marathon. So, planning for that extra time is why I normally get up at 5:30am, so I can lazily go through all my necessary warm up before I meet my teammates to run at 7:00am.

At 6:50 I kiss my wife goodbye and drive to the Run Flagstaff store in downtown Flagstaff and arrive just as Adam Vess is pulling up. We say out casual good mornings, but I am less interested in socializing with Adam today. Not because I despise Adam with a passion (I don't really), but because Brett Gotcher just arrived in town, and I was super excited to catch up with him.

The next few hours went by too quickly, after running 7.5 miles with Brett and my teammates I stretched out and chatted a bit more. Then I met my wife at Dunkin Donuts, our planned post-run breakfast destination this morning, I ordered a half dozen, some coffee and then we decided to head home and eat there. My wife was coming from class, so it wasn't that much of a wasted trip to meet at Dunkin. At home we ate, drank, showered and got ready to catch our flight.

We left our house at 9:30am to drop out puppy off at Nick Hilton's house so they could watch her while we were away. After a quick drop off we headed to the airport and it wasn't until this point that I started to think that we were cutting things rather close. Usually the Flagstaff airport is pretty relaxed when it comes to check in times and boarding since it is such a small airport. We however made the mistake of thinking that we could just show up at 10:00am for a 10:25 flight and not have any issues whatsoever. We were wrong.

First we couldn't check my bag and would either have to leave it in Flagstaff (not an option), or change our flights to a later time and arrive in NYC at midnight. Terrible planning. Instead my wife volunteered to just change her flight, make sure I get to NYC and she would check my bag along with her. That also means I get to travel with her bag, which is pretty much my only company right now. I also have my phone playing music, so I am not completely alone.

My Travel Companion!

I make the trip to phoenix easily enough, only to discover when I get there that because of all the bad weather in NYC our plan is grounded for an undetermined amount of time (officially 2 1/2 hours). Turns out the after all our poor planning and issues with trying to convince the airline people in Flagstaff to do us a favor and just check my bag anyways, that my wife would leave Flagstaff 3 hours after me and arrive in NYC only 45 minutes behind. Such is the life of travel.

The time is not ticking by and her flight should arrive in about 20 minutes now. This was a great way to pass the time. Thanks for reading and hopefully you will follow me as I race the INS NYC Marathon this Sunday morning! Tune in at 9am EST on ABC or ESPN2!