I arrived in Austin Friday afternoon and met my old college roomate, Nic, and his wife, Johanna, at the Filker Botanical Gardens. They asked me to shoot a few pics of them while I was in town. So I met them out there and while it was a bit overcast the weather held off long enough to get a few good shots before it really started to rain.
We went and grabbed some coffee and waited a couple hours for our other roomate, David, to get in from Dallas. He got in around 8pm and met us at my favorite restaurant in the world, Carrabba's. If you live anywhere east of Las Vegas you probably have one near you and you owe it to yourself to try it out. Its the most amazing italian food in the world. We hung out and talked for hours, telling stories all of us had heard and laughing so hard our stomachs hurt.
That night we walked outside and realized that it was not only raining, it was freaking freezing too... well it wasn't technically freezing but 40 is really cold for a boy from Orange County. Needless to say I was a bit worried about my shoot the next day... the whole reason I was in town. Well the next day I woke up and looked out the hotel window to see pouring rain. Not good news. After waiting a few hours to see if we'd get a break from the pouring rain and freezing temperatures I called the couple and we decided to cancel the shoot and hope for better weather today. As a side note, yesterday actually set the record for the most rain in one day ever in Austin.
So I get up this morning hoping for better weather. No such luck. Still raining steadily and even colder that yesterday. So David and I grab some lunch and head over to Starbucks. We finished our coffee, said our goodbyes and I took off for the airport.
This is David... he has a blog call "Three words back". He wanted a new pic for his blog so I took one for him in Starbucks.
I got to the airport at 2:50 for my 3:30 filght, freaking out, thinking I was going to miss my flight. I got up to the ticket counter and found out my flight had been delayed 30 minutes. That was the last good thing that happened today.
We wait for about an hour and the hear that the flight will be delayed another hour. We finally board the plane about 4:50 and after 45 minutes of sitting on the plane the captain get on the intercom and says that someone in a previous flight stole one of the pieces to a seatbelt, and because the flight is completely full we have to wait for someone to bring us a new seatbelt. Another 20 minutes go by and they have the seatbelt installed... awesome, let's get going.
We pull back from the gate and sit... and sit. The captain comes back on the intercom and informs us that one of the engines wouldn't start so we have to have a mechanic come check it out.
More sitting.
The captain comes back on and tells us that while we were waiting for the seatbelt to arrive the starter on the left wing engine froze and when they tried to start it, it broke. He goes on to tell us that there are no starters in Austin so we all need to go see the gate agent to arrange alternate plans.
So I wait in line for an hour only to hear that they're going to put me on standby for a flight at 7:20. Awesome. The only problem is pretty much everyone else from the flight is on standby too.
So that flight comes and goes and now I'm waiting for them to fix the original plane which I'm told will probably depart about 10:30. So I'm sitting in the airport waiting to get on a jankety old plane that's going to take me to San Jose where we'll arrive about 1am and the next flight out to Orange County isn't for 7 or 8 hours.
Best day ever.
Labels: Travel
