Life from the Road: Atlanta, Maple Leafs and being stuck in Georgia

The sun rises at the Vancouver airport to start my Atlanta adventure

It's funny how sometimes the most seemingly inconsequential decisions can cause a domino, topple down effect and the more I travel the more I expect that eventually, something like this is bound to happen. It started off innocently enough whem Matthes asked if I wanted to go to the Atlanta Supercross - awesome. I'd always wanted to go to Atlanta as it consistently draws the biggest most passionate crowds of the entire tour. Then, a few weeks ago he asked if I wanted to stay an extra day and go to a hockey game - again, awesome(though it was Leafs vs Thrashers). So, he switched my flight from Sunday to Monday and on Friday I made the trip from Vancouver down to warm and sunny Atlanta.

Saturday was race day and oh man, what a race it was! With one of the best races I've ever seen in the books, we made the trip back downtown on Sunday for the Thrashers-Leafs game and it was actually pretty entertaining. Bonus was our seats - only four rows from the glass. I doubt I'd ever have a chance of getting seats that close at a Canucks game so there's something to be said about going to a game in a place where Hockey's way down the popularity chart. The game itself was pretty entertaining and it ended up going down to overtime where the Thrasher's scored to take the win. Putting Steve on suicide watch, we drove back to the hotel in Buckhead.

Looking forward to getting home, here's where things started to go south. My flight ended up being fairly late, around 5 pm so I ended up going to the airport with Steve as he was flying down to Tampa at 11. No big deal, I could get some work done while waiting for my flight. Eventually I made my way through security to find out my flight was delayed. It was going to make catching my connection in Chicago a little tight but the agent assured me I'd still make it - barely. So, here's where it started to fall apart. As the plane made it to Atlanta and actually was in the landing pattern, a huge thunderstorm swept in, shutting down the entire airport. The plane deferred to Nashville and just like that, I wasn't going home.

The funny thing is that it had be nice the entire time I was in Atlanta. Even if the plane had been on time, I would have taken off before the storm hit and I wouldn't be talking about this. So, with no other options, it was a night of sleeping in the airport and a 6am flight to Chicago. I'd still be home in Vancouver by noon so it sucked but what can you do so I made the best of it. Or, so I thought. After managing four hours of restless sleep at the airport, I headed back over to my gate only to find out the flight was delayed again 2 and a half hours and there was no way I was making my connection in Chicago. Seriously?!! Now, I was starting to go crazy - I'd been in the airport for 20 hours already and now I was looking at another 3 hrs there and five more in Chicago before the next flight to Vancouver took off.

So, finally I made it back home at 9pm last night - 36 hours after I walked into the Atlanta airport.

Next time I spend 36 hours flying somewhere, I'd better be going somewhere on the other side of the world.

The flight to Atlanta was uneventful. The cascade mountains looked great in the morning light.

A few months ago I blogged about my trip to the Grand Coulee Dam in Washington State. Here's the largest hydro producer in North America from the air.