July 11

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Real pussywillows and fake forsythia in my parents' dining room.  Love the fallen flowers....  Nice touch, Mom!

Incandescent light made the walls WAY too yellow, in the pic.  I wanted to keep the yellow in the flowers, but lose the yellow on the wall, and the above is my compromise.....



I left very early for the airport, as I wanted to factor in time if I had to call Hertz to come get me in case the "low tire pressure" the car had been fussing about was actually true and caused a real problem.

No problems appeared.

The Kansas City airport was brilliantly designed, for the no-security era at the time.  The terminals are circle segments.  You could park in the middle (near your gate), walk right in to the gate, and walk straight through the terminal to your plane.  Efficient and clean and lovely.  The need for security, and secured areas for passengers to wait, sadly rendered this excellent airport the exact opposite of efficient.

One aspect of the airport design that is still excellent is that there is a gas station adjacent to the rental-car area of the airport.  I got to the airport, gassed up the car, and gave it back.



The floors in the airport terminals are excellent.  Here is Michigan, surrounded by its beautiful lakes.

There was a little plane at my gate when I arrived (quite early).  It was supposed to have taken people to Cincinnati, but couldn't fly.  Those poor Cincinnati people waited and waited as mechanics tried to take care of the problem.  Eventually they gave up and cancelled the flight.  People who were trying to get to southern Ohio were trying flying to all sorts of other places (Indianapolis, Columbus), and were not finding good alternatives.  I was sorry for them.

Here you see that little plane, and, in the background, the plane that was supposed to take me (and a lot of other people) to Detroit.  You can see they are fixing to push that little plane away from gate 50, and take it somewhere else.

It was not a propitious day to fly Delta out of Kansas City.  That waiting plane, above, was able to get itself to the gate under its own steam, but there was a problem with one of the navigational units, we were told.  Again, some amount of time was spent trying to fix it, but the captain (who was there, waiting, along with the rest of us) told us that they were not able to fix it, and we would be waiting for another plane which was supposed to arrive in KC at 9:00 pm.  (My flight was supposed to leave at 5:45 pm....)

Groovy.  (not...........)

Gate 50 is an example of the problems caused by needing secured areas at this airport.  After you go through security for gate 50, you are in an area with no bathrooms, no drinking fountain, no food.  If you want any of that, you have to leave the secured area, and then go back through security.

(Digression -- I am not blaming Delta for weather issues, and I surely want them to decline to fly planes that are not safe.  I do, however, totally blame them for putting us in secured areas with no amenities.  This is a problem that is well-understood.  Solutions are understood.  I definitely blame Delta for putting us in this situation...............  Eventually they unloaded the peanuts, pretzels, bottled water, and canned beverages from the plane, and let us have whatever we wanted, but we still had to go out if we wanted to use the bathrooms.  Humph!  End of Digression.)

I left gate 50's secured area.  I decided to walk from there to the far end of terminal B, to the other end of terminal B, and back to my gate.

Well, well, what have we here?

Sadly, the PGA shop was closed.

Honey, here's what I did not bring you from Kansas City.  Wouldn't your golf buddies have been jealous, if you showed up to play in this spiffy outfit?  I wonder if they had yellow shoes and gloves to match?  Hats?

Now here's something you'd have actually enjoyed, especially since your previous golf-club covers died honorable deaths after years of use.

I might actually have bought you some of these, on spec, at this price.......

While I was out walking, Delta made the announcement that they would be moving us to gate 58, which had food, water, and bathrooms in its (much larger) secured area.

I had tried to get soup at one restaurant while I was walking, but they were out of soup and only had pizza.  No thanks.  (And ... sheesh!)  In the end I made do with pretzels, peanuts, tomato juice, and the almonds and cut-up broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots I'd brought with me.

We were lucky; our plane arrived on time (from Detroit!) at 9:00 pm, and we left on it at 9:30.  No cancellations for us.  I was very sorry to be asking my better half to pick me up after midnight, especially as my daughter's flight home from KC on the 8th was also delayed until 9:30 (because of weather), so that was the second time in less than a week that he was picking someone up at the airport after midnight......................

Here you can see the three circle-segments that make up the Kansas City airport (upper left edge).  That blue-white mostly-rectangular area to the right of the terminals is the rental car space.  Totally a piece of cake to return a rental in KC, especially in comparison to the last time we returned a rental car, in Florence, Italy, where it was awful!

Less zoomed, and including the moon.....

Chicago, glowing gold, next to its night-blackened lake.

Once we actually got on the plane, everything went very smoothly.

I think this may be the first time I've ever had a woman who was captain of the plane.  I've had women in the flight crew, but I think this is the first time one was captain.

Hooray for women captains!  And the lead flight attendant was a not-so-young woman of color.  Hooray for more-equal opportunity for non-pale-males!

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