20100221

Today ran continuous with yesterday in the sense of little to no sleep was achieved. A chance of flurries turned into a winter storm warning... so I had to scramble to get on alternative flights to beat the storm.

American Airlines graciously informed me at least 4 different times how wonderful they were being to "let" me fly standby. Today was the official last day of them allowing standby status for regular ticket holders. I'm not certain what to think about this. How are they doing me any favors here? I'm the one taking the initiative to get out of bed and/or not sleep at all at 4am to hop on an empty flight in order to avoid delayed or cancelled flights later in the day. I'm one less stranded, disgruntled passenger, one less phone call to their customer service. I just don't understand the business model that these folks operate under.

I did in fact arrive to Albuquerque today. I was hoping for some warm, sunny weather, but was greeted instead by some fairly spectacular clouds, and rain upon arrival, which is always nice in the high desert.

I immediately went to my office to pick up my touring bike and was off to REI (my favorite store on earth) to pick up some spares and odds and ends. Ah, but the bad weather struck, so I met Will for a beer at Marble. Triple IPA (ABV 11.0). Pretty awesome beer. The weather did not clear up much so I just went ahead a did a ride anyway. It was cold, damp, but still was pretty nice to ride in the winter.

The rest of the day was uneventful, having lots of problems with tethering my droid on this trip and my trackpad on my MacbookPro is acting up.

News on grandma K not good all day. Her CHF has kicked in, having fluid build up and breathing is quite difficult.