Journey Log 3 - East Coast Adventures
Saturday, September 02, 2006
I arrived on the Empire Builder into Penn Station, New York, only 3 hours late! I hopped on a bus and was picked up in Jersey by 8pm by my good friend Charles Taylor who put me up most hospitably for the night. After my first night's sleep in a bed in over 5 nights, we awoke early and drove to the airport where I took off for Philadelphia. What I failed to realize before was that the numbers 11:30am and 8:30pm meant that I had almost a 9 hour layover in Philly! To make the most of the time I caught the train to downtown and had a grand old time seeing Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell (strangely, after watching American Treasure the night before) and visiting Christ Church, where our nation's first two presidents and many other officials went church every Sunday.
When I returned to the airport to get on my flight to Dublin, I heard an announcemenet over the intercom that they were overbooked and were asking for some volunteers to take a later flight to Dublin. At this I jumped up and ran to to counter, realizing that I had probably the most flexible schedule of anyone in that terminal, and also remembering that people had sometimes recieved good compensation for this act of charity. Good compensation, I found out, was to the tune of a free round-trip ticket to and from anywhere the airline flies, anytime in the next year! Woohoo!!! I still haven't decided where I'll go yet.
The delay and detour also got me a stopover in Glasgow, and a stamp in my passport from Scotland. Woohoo 2!!!
Posted by Benjamin Washam 7:48 PM
