Friday, April 21, 2006

They Have Jack FM in Texas Too!!!

Woot! I freakin' love Jack FM....wait time to back track.

Because I am insane. Let's say it together, "Leah is insane." I have some sickness when it comes to flying. I HAVE to be at the airport insanely early before our flight leaves. Now, if there is some kind of new thing happening, some new way of getting to the airport all bets are off the table and what used to be 2.5 hours early turns to 3.5 hours early. I told you, I am insane.

Because we didn't want to leave our car out at O'Hare for 5 days and because it would be a little pricey, we decided to leave our car in Chicago near the Addison Blue line el stop and then take the el. This would only be $2 each way each so a total of only $8, which is nice. But wait, what if there is all no parking over in that neighborhood? Ok, well, now that I am worrying about it we have to leave even earlier. I am not kidding, we left at 6:55 for an 11:55 flight at an airport which is roughly 15 miles away. We got to O'Hare at 8:15. Jason asked if when we are 50 if we will have to arrive the day before our flight.

So what does one do when one has over 3 hours until their flight? You find a bar. You order a bloody mary, that's what. So that's what we did. The bartender asked if we wanted a double because it was the same price, so of course the lushes here at JasonLeahRun said,"Of course, who doesn't want basically a pint of vodka at 8:30 in the morning?"

This at least allowed us some sleep on the flight to Dallas which was nice. Then all hell broke loose.

We are staying at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Dallas so we have directions to get there from the airport. We get our rental car and we head that way. We find Jack FM ( hence the title of this entry) on the radio and are cruisin' on downtown. We see the hotel, we go there, and then we decide to try and find the self park lot because valet can get a little pricey. So someone (and by someone I mean Jason) can't follow directions and so we end up completely turned around and can't get back to our hotel. We end up back on the highway that took us to the hotel in the first place and I think, "ok, well this should be fine because we can just re-exit at the hotel exit and try again". Oh no. You can't exit. We were in some kind of HOV lane, I guess, like express lanes but there was no way to get to the normal highway....FOR LIKE 15 MILES. I felt like a slot car as I am in a lane just wide enough for my car with big cement barriers on each side of the car, and I'm watching the hotel receeding in my rearview mirror. Finally the HOV lane merges with the normal traffic and we can get ourselves turned around and head back to the hotel.

We checked in and ran into a fellow graduate student and found a great bar called The Crocodile or something like this which had a great upstairs patio. The waiter told us that tomorrow night there will be live music, so I am hoping that we can check that out. Now it time to relax and get ready for a day of meetings tomorrow along with a 5 mile pace run. Sunday evening we are meeting Runner Susan for an 11 mile run at White Rock Park....which of course is very exciting!

6 comments:

Haight said...

(in my Homer voice)

mmmmmmmm.....bloody mary

ShoreTurtle said...

That's funny about getting to the airport so early! I am the same way. My wife thinks that I am crazy too. From now on, I will respond that I'm not as crazy as Leah.

You mentioned that Jason can't follow directions so you went way out of your way--maybe Jason just wanted to drive around a little more in the rental car before getting to the hotel--like taking a tour.

Have fun! (or as much fun as you can have in Texas)

LeahC said...

The bloody marys were super tasty...something about tomato juice must mask vodka because they didn't taste and strong as he made them!

Jason said...

shoreturtle figured out what no one else could. I never actually get lost, I just like to get as much value as possible out of a rental car, and that means using the whole damn tank of gas.

Joe said...

We have Jack FM here in Vancouver, too!

Full Metal Lunchbox said...

I love bloody mary's!  They are my beverage of choice after a particularly successful run.