I love Southwest!

My travel season has begun and I will start out this entry with a little “shoutout” to my personal favorite airline – Southwest! I flew Southwest to Denver today and am now sitting in the Denver Airport waiting for my next flight (on Southwest) to Portland, OR. The Denver to Omaha service is a new service that just started earlier this month and while my flight here was not quite full, I hope the fullness of the flight is a good indication that the service will remain. I find it incredible that while most airlines are cutting flights, routes, and cities, Southwest is actually expanding. I heard that they are in a really good position right now because they elected to lock in a fuel price awhile back so they are not paying the astronomical prices for gas that the other airlines are paying. I also have to believe that they are just really smart about the way they do things. The Southwest crew and staff are always incredibly friendly. It isn’t that the staff and crew on other airlines are unfriendly, I have just encountered some people who really don’t seem as though they like their jobs very much. It seems to me that the Southwest staff always appear to like their jobs. About 10 minutes into our flight to Denver (which is about an hour and 15 minute flight) one of the crew (our crew had 2 women and a man – which I also notice on Southwest fairly often – lots of men on the crew) asked if there were any medical professionals on board and if so, could they come back to the back of the plane. There was some sort of medical emergency with a passenger that lasted pretty much throughout the flight. I felt the staff handled everything in a very calm manner, and most people on board the plan probably didn’t even know what was going on. I was near the back so I had a little bit better idea, but except for the fact that the crew did not serve a full beverage service, I doubt most people even had any idea what was going on. When they first made the announcement I began thinking that we may have to turn around because, let’s face it, there aren’t very many places to stop between Omaha and Denver. I would imagine that one of the airports (McCook, North Platte, Grand Island, Kearney or something like that) might have a runway that would be long enough, but we would still be in the middle of nowhere. While a Denver EMS crew did board the plan and remove the passenger before the rest of us got off, she did walk off the plan so hopefully it was just some several motions sickness, altitude sickness or something like that. The woman in the seat across from me was traveling with two kids (ages 3 and 2) and appeared to be expecting another. I helped entertain the little girl and watched her while she and her son made a trip to the bathroom. All three of them definitely would not have fit. I guess that is a challenge of traveling with kids.

As I mentioned, my travel season has begun. My travel this year is brutal. Between today and November 1st, I will only be spending 3 full days in the office (I think I have 3 half days thrown in there too). That is about 7 straight weeks of travel. Granted, I do get to spend most weekends at home, but it really makes me realize how quickly the time will go by. Think about this…by the time I am done traveling we will be three days away from electing a new president. And yes, I have taken into consideration that I will be spending a great deal of time in California in October and am preparing myself for the barrage of political ads that will be on the airwaves. That completely blows my mind considering that we have been going at this for about a year and a half now. It will be a tough seven weeks. I love this part of my job because I get the opportunity to really step out and show off Creighton to students and convince them to give us a chance, but it is tough to live out of a suitcase for 7 weeks. I usually have enough time at home to empty out my suitcase and repack again. Neither Matt nor I are telephone talkers so we struggle with communication when I am on the road. It is also hard because most of my travel is to the west coast so I often have events when Matt is home at night available to talk and then by the time I am available he is in bed. I try to not disrupt his schedule too much, so sometimes we just know we can't talk to each other. We do our best. Sometime just short message via email or text message are the best way to stay in contact. We make it through and I think it makes us appreciate when we do get to be together.