Back from Vegas…

Well, I just got back from a business trip to Las Vegas. Although the trip was terrific the journey really bit the big one. To start it all off, the first journey of my leg wound up being cancelled and we had to reschedule. The only problem there was that the next available flight was not going out until the next morning. That would have got us to Vegas a little late for the course and conference I was attending.

Eventually I did land in Sin City and managed to check into my hotel with little difficulty and the rest of the week went relatively smoothly until of course the return trip. You can check out the pictures that I have put on the net… well once I post them. They should be available shortly at www.gorhamfamily.com/vegas .

If you thought that the trip there was something you should have been on the return trip. It all started at 03:00 in the morning Las Vegas time. Why this early you may ask? Well in order to ensure that you clear the extremely long lines at the security counter you need to be at the airport at least and hour before the flight, preferably two. The flight was at 06:00 so I planned to leave the hotel at 04:00. That should give me plenty of time you would think. Well as it turned out it was plenty. Despite the 40 minutes waiting in line first to have the boarding cards made then another 20 minutes to get through  the security scanners I did eventually make it to the Gate with time to spare.

Everyone was ready to get on board at 06:00 for a 06:40 take off but wait… there’s more… The plane was held at the airport in Vegas as there were delays in planes taking off and landing in Chicago. Suffice it to say that the plane did not actually get airborne until 12:30 Vegas time. Of course the connector in Chicago was missed…well wouldn’t you miss a plane if yours was 6 hours late. After getting in line for another ticket and waiting for the plane to arrive… which of course was delayed also. a 15:45 plane which did not take off … of course after playing musical gates…until 21:30 (Chicago time now(21:30 Vegas time)). It finally landed in Toronto at 11:30 Eastern.

To top it all off, there was another delay at the receiving gate at the Toronto Airport. Due to the backlog caused by Chicago, and the weather in Toronto, there were no available gates at the terminal for over 1 and 1/2 hours. Talk about boring. Waiting 200 metres from the gate for an hour and a half doing nothing. Now isn’t that fun! .

So after that we still had a 3 hour drive to get home… remember the first part of our trip was cancelled thanks to the wonderful airline.. What does this all add up to. Well for a flight that would normally take a little more that 4–1/2 hours managed to balloon to a full 24 hours. We almost could have made better time if we drove to Las Vegas.

It has been a long time hasn’t it.

Well I have not been as active on the blog as I should be but hey, I’ve been busy.  The family pages have been updated. I just started using the latest version of Sothinks DHTML Menu and I needed to figure out how some of the new features worked. Suffice it to say that I finally did succeed. I still have some more work to do in making the site is up and compliant with WC3 conventions but I am finally on my way there.

I heard and interesting thing on the news today. It appears that smoking bans have been put into effect in Prisons. The funny thing is that the prisoners are not complying with the ban. Strange thing that is, isn’t it, criminals not adhering to the law. Who would of thought.  I guess there are some pretty naive people in the system if they think that the prisoners are going to stop the smoking on their cells just because the law states that it is wrong.