Off to Detroit (and other travel news)

Well, I think Canton, Michigan, actually -- but it is a suburb of Detroit. I'll be in the area this evening through Friday morning, teaching at Visteon. My evenings are already pretty well booked, though they do include (as per usual) being at Tio's on Tuesday. I'm hoping for smooth flights, and weather at both ends looks ok for today, at least. Of course, with flying trouble anywhere in North America can cascade.

I've also booked flights to/from Penguicon (April 18-20), which will be my next trip up Detroit way. This will be my 2nd flight booked using points this year. (The first was flying gabriel_le down to join me in New Mexico for a few days last month.) One of the side benefits of all my travel is the occasional nearly-free (they still get you for various fees, in this case it was about $40 in fees, which is still way cheaper then the flight and even a lot cheaper than driving).

In between, I have Ad Astra in Toronto (March 28-30). I'll be driving to that.

March actually looks to be a pretty quiet month, I might actually spend 3 of the 4 weeks in Ottawa! (Well, not counting the last weekend.)

arrived in Detroit

Flight went smoothly, had dinner with elizilla, then found my hotel without problem.

DTW makes the luggage handling at Ottawa international really embarrassing. I walked quickly to the luggage carousel, and yet my luggage was still already there by the time I got to the luggage carousel. And this isn't the first time that has happened in Detroit. In Ottawa, we will clear the plane, wait for customs lineup and then still wait for an extended time (20 minutes tends to be short) for the luggage to appear. I really don't understand why Ottawa is so consistently horribly slow.

And, at the car rental, the first vehicle they offered was a PT Cruiser -- which I don't like, so I asked for "a sedan" of some sort... the person said they had a Mazda (and I've had a couple nice Mazdas previously) so I said sure, only to discover they had a Mazda 5, a (small) mini-van. Doh! I didn't feel like walking back in and lining up and fighting for another car, so that's what I've got. Oh well. At least I won't be doing the amount of driving I was down in New Mexico.