Austin in 24 hours

Thursday morning I woke up around 4:30-4:45 to catch a 8:10 am flight to Austin, TX for work. Seems early, but here was how I broke down the time budget:

1.0 hours to get ready (finish packing, shower, shave, etc.)

1.5 hours to walk to the train, catch the train, transfer to the orange line, walk to the terminal.

0.25 hours to get through security, get breakfast, and get to the gate.

This adds up to 2.75 hours, which, waking up at 4:45 would put me at the gate by 7:30 am. This would give me about an hour before the departure. TSA recommends, last I checked, arriving at the airport 1.5 - 2 hours before your flight departs. My actual numbers were more like this:

wake up at 4:45.

leave apartment building front door at 5:42

arrive at train platform at 5:53-5:56

board southbound Red train at 5:59

departing Fullerton station at ~6:10 (i put this in here because I think its the fastest I have ever gotten from Wilson to Fullerton.

in Roosevelt station at 6:28

board Midway bound Orange Line train at 6:33

arrive at Midway about 7 am

make it to the gate by 7:25 am

on board the plane at 8:03 am

so, I was pretty successful getting out the door in under an hour. By my calculations, it took me 46 minutes to get from my front door to the Orange Line transfer at Roosevelt and another 30 minutes to get from there to Midway, so about 1 hour and 15 minutes. I should note that my times could not get much more optimal. I waited less than 5 minutes for a train at both stations, its often times a longer wait.
I spent about 25 minutes in the airport getting to the gate. So, rounding up, it took me about what I budgeted, or, 2 hours and 45 minutes. I think in the future I should build in an extra 15 minute buffer or, have a bailout plan if I reach a point where the timing isn't going to work. If it would have taken me 10-20 minutes longer on the train, I would have been cutting it close at the airport had I had to get inspected or anything like that.

In Austin, I met up with Craig who landed about the same time as me, and then we waited for Todd. We drove into Austin and had a quick lunch at KFC and then headed to our meeting. The meeting was short, but I think it went pretty well. We covered the basics and got the intangible benefit of a face to face meeting.

After the meeting, we checked in at the hotel and I made a quick shirt change and headed to the hospital to visit Ward and David. Ward and David are two Triangle's from Houston who were involved in a serious car wreck last Friday night. They have both been in the ICU at Austin's Brackenridge Hospital since then. They are both recovering well it seems, though I am sure it was a traumatic experience. Despite the fact that they are still in the ICU, the spirits among the families were high. Ward's dad is funny and was trying to get me to stay another day and David was soon to be extubated and would hopefully be able to wake up more and finally get to talk to his family. Ward was feeling so good that while I was out of the room, he made a request for the left side of his head that was about to get shaved to match the right side that a delta-T be carved in his hair and that we get a picture. It made me laugh. Ward was very talkative, all things considered, and after I had made my introduction and was a little at loss for words, he spoke very quietly and deliberately (his throat is still tender from the tubes) and asked me "so...when did you join Triangle?" and a hodgepodge of other questions. I was very happy to see that both David and Ward are making progress in their recovery.

I left the hospital and drove back to the hotel where I picked up Craig and Todd and we went to dinner at El Arroyo in Austin. The food was good, the music was good, and the margarita was also tasty. After dinner, we were all pretty much beat, and we headed back to the hotel. I stayed up until almost 11 working on stuff and then went to bed. woke up at 4:30 this morning to catch the 5 am shuttle to the airport for a 6:30 flight home. 24 hours and 40 minutes later, I stepped off the plane into the airport. It was quite the long day.

--Andy