I finished up my contribution to a week long training course in Canberra yesterday afternoon and headed out to the airport to catch a flight to Sydney for some Indigo training that Microsoft is running at North Ryde. I have been really looking forward to this training, but of course – I’ve always got a travel tail to tell.
The class finished up a little bit early so I headed out to the airport and got there a little bit after 5:00pm. My flight wasn’t until 8:10pm so I had a bit of time on my hands. When I rocked up to the check-in counter with my luggage the chap behind the counter said that I was too early to check-in (20–minutes to early). Fortunately for me it bended the rules a bit and took my luggage anyway.
I headed up to the gate and got ready for a long wait. Normally I don’t mind being at the airport early since I can just whip out my laptop but unfortunately its busted at the moment (hopefully I’ll have the new one tomorrow). On the way up I disrobed down to my underwear (not really - but thats what it feels like) and had one of the swab scans done on me.
After a while I started getting hungry so I headed down to the Ground Bar to get a coffee and a bite to eat (the burgers are pretty reasonable actually). I don’t understand why Qantas doesn’t have a food service available up at the gates – Virgin – the cut price carrier does . . .
Anyway – once I finished up I headed upstairs again, on the way I got swabbed again (lucky me). By the time I got upstairs most of the flights were starting to get delayed due to hold ups with Sydney air traffic control.
The problem with travelling from Canberra to Sydney is that flights pretty much fly in and turn straight back around to go to Sydney so delays like this cause a bit of a feedback loop.
The flight finally got off the ground at about 8:40pm so I got into the hotel at North Ryde pretty late. The good news is that I’m here now and Andrew Coates and Dave Glover are here on the course too – and Andrew has just told me that Charles Sterling will be here tomorrow too!
Geek Paradise.