Ashley Dawn: Adios, Puerto Rico

It's Saturday, almost lunch time, and I'm still in my pajamas watching the snow fall. It's good to be home.

My last week in Puerto Rico was fairly productive. I walked the other fields quickly and the day of rest on Sunday did wonders for my feet. I was also able to do some laundry, so the day off did wonders for my nose as well--my clothes were pretty ripe! I'll cover the weekend activities with pictures soon, but I thought I would just do a quick update to say I was home.

Monday and Tuesday went smoothly at work and then Wednesday morning I finished in the field and headed to the station. The staff there commented that they hadn't seen me in a week and wondered if I was still on island. See? No human interaction. Anyway, I spent the day catching up on computer work and left a bit later than I would have liked, but headed north to San Juan around 4 to spend the night before the flight. San Juan is an hour and a half drive with no traffic and I wasn't sure how it would be going in during rush hour. Luckily, everyone was headed out of the city and I made it to the airport just fine. I checked into the Best Western that is literally attached to the airport. It was great. The rooms were small with a tiny TV, but they were nicer than what I had been staying in for the past 10 days. Even better, they had a hot tub on the sun deck with a view of the control tower. I'm not kidding--scroll through the pictures. And they weren't the tile-benched hot tubs either, but the fancy kind they sell at the state fair with reclining molds in them. After a long few weeks, it was amazing.

My travel story, unfortunately, deserves to be told. I was anxious to get home on Thursday so I was up a little before 6, ate breakfast, and was at my gate by 7:30 for a 9:45 flight. There was another flight to Atlanta boarding and I thought momentarily that it would be nice to hop on that one and get home sooner, but I waited obediently until my flight boarded. And then sat at the gate for what seemed to be too long. We taxied and sat forever on the tarmac (in reality it was more like 30 minutes), and then they took us back to the gate. As soon as we got back to the gate they informed us we would be taxiing again, but we never left the gate. We were allowed to get off of the plane if we wished, but were told to stay nearby as they got a part for the plane. I watched half of a movie before they told us the part (pitot heat--important for instrumentation but not a structural thing) could not be found on the island and would have to be flown in from Atlanta. The part would get in at 2:30, then they would have to install it and run some tests, so there would be at least a 6 hour delay. We all got off, disgruntled, and it was now 11:30. The next flight to Atlanta was at 12:45 (which I secured one of the last seats on) and would arrive after my connecting flight in Atlanta. I figured being in Atlanta was one step closer and I had already spent half the day in the San Juan airport.

It was a good thing I went for the earlier flight instead of waiting for our original flight. As we were taxiing to our gate in Atlanta, someone on my original flight saw that it had been cancelled. I had also secured the last seat on the last flight to Des Moines Thursday night, which meant a 6 hour delay in Atlanta. Wireless wasn't free, so I bought Tina Fey's Bossypants (which I read nearly half of that day), and spent some time making friends at the airport bar. Very classy, but hey, what else was I going to do? I didn't sleep on either flight (I think I was too excited to get home) and landed around 10:30 PM. 18 hours of travel. I was exhausted. I worked most of the day yesterday, but slept a lot yesterday and last night. Much better.

And now as I watch the snow fall in huge wet flakes, I'll share some pictures from the hotel I called home for the past few weeks.