On the road again: TEDActive, day 1

Pre-conference activities start Monday, and the talks begin Tuesday, so today was a travel day. 

It started well enough:  I slept late, packed, grabbed some lunch, and headed to the airport.  The first flight was running late, but not a lot, and I spent the time in the Admiral's Club first working and then watching some of the Duke game.  An upgrade came through, so I flew to DFW in first class.

So far, so good.

In DFW, I had time to eat a delicious small bowl of Red Mango vanilla bean frozen yogurt with strawberries and mango, so I can't complain about the time there.  An upgrade came through on the second flight as well, so once again I was lucky. 

Then, the day turned interesting. 

First, we encountered the worst turbulence I can remember.  Everything was bouncing, the plane was weaving a bit, and I actually had to stop reading--which, for me, is quite a concession to the weather.

The flight calmed, but twenty minutes outside Palm Springs we learned that we could not land because a small plane had some sort of mishap on the runway.  (I still don't know what happened.)  After a bit of circling, we were running out of fuel, so we diverted to LA and landed at Ontario airport.  The plan then was to rent buses for all the passengers, but that was going to take a long time, so we and a few other TEDActive attendees rented a SuperShuttle van and rode to Palm Springs. 

We were originally due to land at 8:45 p.m. PST.  I hit my room a little bit before midnight. 

I am happy not to be traveling.