Baltimore, Sep 26-Oct 1

Worst work trip ever!!!! If I never have to return to Baltimore, that would be perfectly fine with me!

First, let me say, it’s a big, dirty, scary city. My work was in Edgewood so I only needed to drive out then back into the city. That was bad enough! As for Edgewood, the most picturesque thing I found to take a picture of was the front of Wegman’s grocery store. The area felt blah… it was on the water, so I thought there could be potential, but I didn’t find much to get excited about. There was an estuary park with trails that was nice, but I had the wrong shoes on to explore the area. They had some fish tanks and hands on activities inside for the kids which is where I got the picture of the cute little turtle. 

Wegman's grocery store. I'm sooooo ready for fall. Unfortunately, all of the trees were still green; no fall colors on this trip except for the display at the store. Loved the comical pumpkins!

This is a Diamondback Terrapin, the Maryland state reptile. 

The work part of the trip was ok. I was teaching the ACS class to the Army National Guard folks at Wise Heliport in Edgewood. The machines actually behaved great, but the students were awful. When they weren't talking about needing to find a job, they were talking about fantasy football. I had to practically force them to participate in running scenarios. Then when they were running a scenario, they were more interested in learning ATC than how to operate the sim. I was not there to teach them ATC!!! Obviously, the voice rec would not work with their terrible phraseology. None of them knew ATC enough to control on the sim and they were not interested in controlling via pseudo pilot entries. Hopefully they learned enough to be able to use the sim successfully in the future.

The final blow to this terrible trip was the exit. Hurricane Ian was coming back ashore in the Carolinas so I thought I would be smart and catch a red eye Friday night and beat the storm. I got a nonstop flight on Spirit Airlines and cancelled my American Airlines flight which had a stopover in Charlotte, which was in the path of the hurricane. Long story short, the flight took off, blew an engine, and had to return for an emergency landing back at BWI. Scary!!!!! Then they handled the situation terribly once we were all off the aircraft. I finally walked away and booked my own hotel room. I rebooked on the American flight I was originally on (with an additional $106 fee) and have yet to be able to get through to Spirit to get a refund for the failed flight. I'm just thankful to get back on the ground after the engine failure. The pilot and flight crew were very calm and professional. It was the employees at the airport and now with the company that were disappointing. 

To top off the trip, the stress of the emergency landing, the last minute scramble to get a hotel room, and the fight to rebook on one airline and get a refund on another airline, caused me to fall off the plant-based-whole-food diet. I broke down and used sugar and creamer in my coffee and for breakfast had eggs. Otherwise, I think I ate ok on this trip. Lots of bread and peanut butter which probably isn't good for the weight-loss effort, but I did try to incorporate veggies and fruit. I'll weigh in tomorrow and think about how to handle the next trip, which will begin on Monday (in two day!!!).