SAN by way of SFO, DEN, and ORD

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last week i had the pleasure of flying across the country. a few times.

it all started with a trip out to san francisco (SFO) for digital id world 2005. i of course was attending for work and specifcally was looking for more information on identity federation, identity-driven web services security, and identity management architecture. overall i’d say it was a good conference, although i was a bit disappointed in a couple of the sessions. sometimes the content seemed to drift off topic, or at least move towards issues i wasn’t interested in… but the speakers were excellent, though, and the vendor turnout included a who’s who of the identity management space.

unfortunately i wasn’t able to stay for the entire week, since i had scheduled a san diego (SAN) vaca with elena, jeff, and lisa starting thursday. most normal people, when faced with the “i’m in SFO for a conference and need to get to SAN for a vacation” would take the easy out: fly or drive down. but not me, of course. ok, i would have, but the conference was a last minute decision, and we had already bought tickets out of chicago (ORD). so needless to say, i was in for a long couple days. what really made it interesting is how things went down. see, i had been scheduled on the 4pm flight on wednesday and thus left the conference early. when i got to the airport and tried to checkin, i found out the 4pm had been cancelled due to weather, and i had two options left: a 6pm and an 11pm. naturally i opted for the 6pm, but that was all booked up so i was looking at an 11pm departure which would put me into ORD at 5am. not a good situation for someone that needed to get home, unpack, repack, shower, and be back at the airport by 7am… i found a helpful gate agent and we looked at flights through DEN, hoping that approach would get me home a little sooner. he and i put together an itinerary that worked, and off to DEN i went. good flight, the plan was working out well… nothing is ever that simple though, and due to a mechanical issue the DEN-ORD segment plane had to be swapped, after everyone was already comfortably on board! although that took a couple extra hours, i’m certainly not complaining, since safety certainly trumps everything.

i wound up getting home around 3am, leaving plenty of turnaround time. before i knew it, 6:30am had rolled around and i was off to ORD to meet up with elena, jeff, and lisa to start a much needed vacation. i’ll save those stories for another post.