Dallas Airport: Part Three

So, I was sat in Dallas airport for about 6 hours!

Blest had reminded me that Christina (one of the OWOA ladies) lives in Dallas and we were hoping we might be able to get in touch with her in order for her to pop by and see me. Unfortunately we didn't have a telephone number for her, so it had to be done at blest's end by email (and I was checking in with blest every hour or so by phone to see if there was any news) and Christina wasn't able to get to check her emails until the evening, by which point it was too late. I know now for future reference that I should get the telephone numbers of people I know (or at least know online) if I'm going to even be passing through their city, on the off chance that something like this might happen again!

I sat in the checking-in area for a long time, reading a magazine I'd found and taking regular trips to the bathroom, newsstand (to get bottles of water and more quarters for the phone) and the payphones. I'd figured that would be the best place to wait if Christina were to be coming, as I'd be near the door, and also it was less noisy that inside the terminal, so I might have a hope of hearing if I was being paged on the tannoy.

At around 2.45pm I was getting hungry and the security line seemed to be getting kinda long, so I decided it was time to go in to the terminal proper and find somewhere to get myself a meal. I got through security ok, although almost lost my shoe in the process - it came out of the tray all my stuff was in, and tried to get stuck in the x-ray machine. Luckily it did come out again, and I was able to find it and put it back on! (I was glad I had decided to wear my clogs to travel in, as it's so much easier to slip then off and on in a hurry than having to fiddle with the laces on my boots)

I wandered around the terminal for a while, looking at all the food places and trying to work out what I wanted to eat. I finally found a Mexian place tucked away up some stairs and they had fajitas on thier menu so I was happy. It was nice to be out of the hustle and bustle of everything going on downstairs, and to find something that I could eat and be happy with!

I was seated next to another solo diner, who happened to be wearing the same coloured top as I was (in fact she also had turquise earrings and glasses frames!). We got chatting, starting with our excellent choice in colour, and moving on to talking about blogging and all sorts of things. That was the first time I've ever eaten in a restuarant by myself, so it was nice to have someone to talk to. I was telling her about how blest and I met online, and it turned out that her job is actually to do with promoting software for colleges\universities to use blogging as a teaching tool - in particular for those subjects which are wordier, like English or History, as a way to refine the editing process and allow for peer assesment, cutting down on the sheer amount of student-written text that lecturers have to wade through.

After I'd eaten I went to find my gate with plenty of time to spare (which is good, because it had changed in the time between being checked on to my flight and now) and of course went to the bathroom a couple more times! There didn't seem to be many people at the gate, so I wondered if my flight would not be as full as the one I'd had from Heathrow to Chicago on the way over. I knew I had an asile seat as the woman at the check-in desk had sorted that out for me. When we finally boarded I discovered that I was actually sitting at the end of a row of five seats, and the only other seat that was occupied was the one at the other end of the row. In fact, the plane was probably half-empty, or certainly not much fuller than that.