DC/NYC Trip, Overnight Flight

Yawn. It’s about 3am Pacific time and I’m 1.5 hours from Washington DC. I managed to get a bit of sleep but since I’ll probably be really tired when I get to DC. I’m only spending a few days since I have to rush back home for jury duty on Monday morning. In addition, I couldn’t leave work until today since we have our quarterly earnings call today. To fit all this into my schedule, I had to fly out of LAX since there are no redeye flights out of SNA. There were a lot of people flying out tonight on American. It took me about 30 minutes to get through security even though I was in the special line. I decided to splurge and spent 25,000 miles to fly first class so I can get some sleep; coming back, I’m slumming it in coach. The waiting area was really crowded too with late night flights leaving from almost every gate.

When I reserved my tickets, I chose seat 6A since it was the last row of first class and a window seat. On short flights, I don’t really care if it’s a window or aisle seat. I was in my seat for about 2 minutes when someone asked me if I can switch seats with 5E so she can sit with her brother. Actually, it’s probably easier to sleep on a window seat because you can lean against the bulkhead but I agreed. Afterward, I noticed that her shoulders, arms, and even hands were covered with tattoos. It wasn’t one big tattoo but literally hundreds of small/medium ones. I tried to take a stealth picture but was unsuccessful. It was too dark for my Sony DSLR to focus and the auto-focus light on my Panasonic would have given me away (yes, I brought two cameras on this trip). Her brother has some on his arms too but it wasn’t crazy like hers. Maybe she’s on that "Inked" TV show or something.

Only one more hour to DC. My flight is landing at Dulles, which is way outside of town. I tried to get a flight to Reagan International but AA did not have any overnight flights and tickets on other airlines was >$300. Hopefully our flight will land on time since I need to catch a bus from the airport to L’Enfant Plaza. I should be able to make the 8:00am bus; the one after that leaves at 8:40am. This is a public bus and the fare is only $3.10. Plan B is a private bus that goes to a closer metro station but costs $10. Unlike the redeye flight from LAX to JFK on a 757, I’m on a small 737 and there’s no Wi-Fi so I’ll have to upload this when I get to the hotel in DC. I just noticed that they didn’t even play the in-flight movie since everyone is sleeping (except for me).