The Long Way to W. Va. and The Rest of the Story

By Chris

I'm in West Virginia safe and sound after a few delays and flying through the same storm twice. You see, to get to West Virginia from Norfolk, Va. on a plane you have to fly all the way down to Georgia and then all the way back up to Charleston. Same thing going back. It's always fun flying through stormy weather, especially in the smaller planes. Bump, bump, dip, dive, climb . . . yeeeee haaaaaa . . . just like a roller coaster. Then, you get to land on the flattened out top of a mountain that is Charleston Yeager Airport. I've learned to not look out the window on that landing. Freaks me out. You are CERTAIN you are going to miss the little runway and fall off the face of the earth . . . or into the next mountain. So, all aisle seating for me . . . head back and eyes closed on that approach. In another display of the insane airline pricing structure, it is much, much cheaper to fly a Delta plane to Atlanta; get on another Delta plane to WV; then the same in reverse than it is to simply fly to Atlanta and back. On the same planes. Seriously. Go on delta.com and see for yourself. Many people say "just book the WV trip and skip the WV legs of the flights." But, they've got that covered. If you don't show up for any ONE leg of a booked trip, they cancel the rest of the itenerary. So . . . no getting home with that trick. So, I typically drive another 45 minutes to a different airport (Newport News) if I am just going to Atlanta, because it is as much as $600 cheaper that way. And, it's still on Delta. Essentially the same amount of miles. ?!?!?!?

To finish off the wreck thoughts. Lauren is so go-with-the-flow. Apparently after checking out the wreckage that was my car, she went back in the store to continue working, ringing people up, etc. I guess she figured all the cops had everything under control. I found this out because she says "These people came through my line who saw the wreck, and told me what happened." So I say "Wow you had to find out from a customer." She replies, "No, I had seen it and came back in. Then the manager saw me and told me to go back outside." Isn't that hilarious. The whole unsettling incident didn't even shake her enough to make her want to see what was going to happen. She saw her daddy's car crunched up with shopping carts and hardware everywhere, gave the cops the registration and casually went back to what she was doing! I guess she gets honestly, because stuff like that doesn't freak me out either. In fact, we got some strange looks from people as we both were joking about how rediculous the whole thing was, laughing in the middle of all the mayhem. You could tell people really expected us to be irrate and yelling or something. Lauren and my freak-out level is well beyond wrecked cars though. In fact, I'm not sure I've ever seen Lauren freak about anything. Sometimes, she seems oblivious (which I get accused of too, sometimes). I prefer to call it steady and balanced.

Speaking of oblivious . . . As we're joking around about the wreck, this cop comes up who looks about 12, checks Lauren out in a bravado cool copy way, and says "So, how old are you?" He then commenses with some other obvious pick-up type conversation, which Lauren willingly engaged in. I stopped laughing, and gave him a look like, "you're shopping for something that ain't for sale." When I told Teresa about it later, Lauren was like "huh??" She didn't even get it. So, of course I told her it's no wonder she doesn't date much. . . she's probably getting hit on all the time and just has not figured it out yet!! Ha!