Airport Friends

http://www.flymyrtlebeach.com

This evening, I'm off to Penn State to see my sister graduate, and I completely forgot that Myrtle Beach created an entirely new terminal!  I know this does not sound very exciting to most of you, but the old Myrtle airport was pathetic.  It felt more like a tiny, crappy mall than an airport, and you could walk from one end to the other in about, oh, two minutes.  NOW, however, it looks like a real airport, and it takes, like, six minutes to walk from end to end!

Contain your excitement.

Okay, so it's still no Dulles Airport (my favorite in the world, by the way), but it is such a huge upgrade from what we had before!  It does look a bit awkward being so empty since the season hasn't started yet, though...

Anyway, my flight this evening got delayed and then canceled, so I got pushed to a later flight.  I got to talking to the girl sitting next to me at the terminal, and it turns out she is a long-term middle school sub in Chattanooga, starting her first full-time teaching job in the fall.  We went to Nacho Hippo (a local restaurant that I was very psyched to see has a chain in the new terminal) and had a beer, then on our long twenty minute flight to Charlotte, we were seated in the back row of the plane together, and then we trekked the Charlotte airport to the end of terminal E for our next flights.

I absolutely LOVE to travel, even though I don't do it very much, and one of the best things about traveling is meeting people along the way.  It was great to meet Jessica, and it was also really nice to have her around to kill two or three hours with me.  BUT, at the same time, I kind of enjoyed that her departure gate in Charlotte was a solid eighteen down from mine.  I like that when we parted ways it was just an "Okay, have a great flight back! Nice to meet ya!"  No "What's your Facebook/Twitter/ name?" (Sidenote: I don't have either.)  I enjoy taking the airport friendship for what it is - a pleasant distraction for a bit, but it's fleeting. I kind of relish the time I get to sit alone at the airport.  Nothing beats people watching while drinking a $10 Jamba Juice. :)

PS - Even though I'm flying domestically, I'm using my passport as my ID, and it kind of disturbs me that I made it to another airport before I realized that it expired in January.  Shouldn't the TSA agents have caught that??