Tropical Storm Lee had come ashore late Friday afternoon evening bringing heavy rains that were needed to help ease the drought situation Louisiana has been in most of the year. The rain continued the rest of the weekend with no breaks, although the intensity of the rain did vary. My flight from New Orleans left mid-morning and luckily there were no delays due to the tropical storm. This was important because there was very little time between connecting flights. As soon I landed in Detroit, it was time to hustle to the next gate for the flight to Minneapolis-St. Paul. After arriving in M-SP, there was just enough time to stop by the Burger King near the gate to get some food prior to boarding the flight to Fairbanks.
Ironically enough, the two ladies who sat to my left were from Kentucky. The flight had a television monitor on the back of the seat in front of me which I scanned until I found the NASCAR race. This started a conversation about NASCAR and, specifically, the debacle that was the race in Kentucky. The woman by the window was friends with one of the VPs for Sunoco. She was able to avoid the traffic snarl by flying in a helicopter to the track, but was giving me the lowdown on how bad the traffic really was and a tongue lashing Bruton Smith endured from Mike Helton in the race control suite.
The flight from M-SP to Fairbanks had wifi available. However, the moment the plane got over Canadian airspace, Delta had to turn off the service. The flight entered Canadian airspace about an hour after taking off which defeated the purpose of even offering the service. Also, there were problems with the television monitors which caused there to be no television to watch during the flight which lasted about 6 hours. This gave me time to re-read the manual to my digital SLR camera. There were some instructional DVDs included with the camera that helped, but I wanted to refresh my memory prior to using the camera heavily over the next several days.
When I arrived in Fairbanks, I picked my luggage up from the carousel and called the hotel for them to send the shuttle to the airport. The shuttle driver was from the Netherlands and just one of several individuals that I would run into from Europe during the trip. After checking in, I prepped for leaving the next day. The sun was still in the sky well after 9:30 pm despite it being so late in the summer.
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