everything feeds process

Back when I was in high school, circa the early nineties, I liked to visit the airport just for fun. This was before the days of heightened security, so any person could choose to pass through the metal detectors and hang out. At the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport, there were multiple opportunities for food and window shopping, but that wasn’t my main focus. I just liked to watch the people who were there to travel. They didn’t know that I was watching them and I liked peeking into their private lives.

This past weekend, I had the opportunity to spend a lot of time in a few airports. On Thursday, I traveled to Charlotte, NC for a conference, passing through Minneapolis/St. Paul (MSP) and O’Hare (ORD), before arriving at Charlotte-Douglas (CTL).  I spent about an hour and a half at MSP, another two hours at ORD, and an hour at CTL, waiting for a colleague to arrive.   After yesterday, that seemed like nothing.

Yesterday, my colleague and I arrived at CTL in the late afternoon, about two hours prior to our flight so that we could eat dinner before our flight.  We knew that we had a very tight layover n ORD, so we came prepared.  However, at the ticket counter we discovered that our flight to ORD would be delayed by three hours, due to rain. Our potential connection to MSP from ORD was ruined and all subsequent flights out of ORD were full.  Our choice was to either try to remain on our delayed flight, with the hope that we could fly standby on a full flight to MSP or to take the 10:10 PM flight from CTL to MSP.  We chose the 6 hour wait at CTL.

At first, I was disappointed. I couldn’t fathom how to spend 6 hours at a relatively small airport. I decided to tweet my experience (as a means to keep my sanity and my spirits in check) and buy a couple new books.

So how did we spend six hours? We had a three course meal, at three different restaurants. We ate a “cheese” plate with Laughing Cow cheeses at one store, tacos at a Mexican restaurant, and ridiculously good gelato for dessert. We visited almost every shop on the concourse, from a creepy toy store to the two different cap stores. (We wondered why a small airport needs two separate ball cap stores, as well as two Cinnabons.) We read and walked.

We also people watched and made up stories about the people we saw. We tried to see if we could identify the other Minnesotans from the crowd. We watched the bathroom attendant sing on her break. We watched people run from one side of the concourse to the other, either to catch a connection or to just waste time.

I also took pictures, of all the weird things that you can find in the Charlotte Douglas airport. I snapped pictures of snow globes, gelato and waffle cones, a Captain Morgan statue, a miniature astronaut suit for children, and the white rocking chairs that were available in the main atrium of the airport.

I learned last night that I was lucky to be stranded in Charlotte.  I’m lucky because my colleague is a good traveler, a fellow writer and reader, and a generally even-keeled person.  She was happy to let me snap pictures of everything I saw and she was also happy to read and write for part of our time.  I’m also lucky that I had this time to people watch, take pictures, and generally blow time.

Suffice to say, I had a great time, savoring food, reading a new book, and taking pictures. I was happy to get home, at 1 AM no less, but I think I made the most of a strange, long day.