Oh the Places You'll Go: Phoenix

Of course, you have to get there first.

Yes, I was booked on American. The good news is that they took care of me, by changing my AA LGA-DFW-PHX trip at a reasonable hour to a United JFK-SFO-PHX trip leaving at 6 am. A 6 am flight means the car arrives at 4 am. Blek. And I hate flying backwards. Of course, the night before was an ANTM catch-up dinner party, and I wasn't packed. Ninety minutes of sleep does not make finding the fabulous very easy, at any hour.

When I arrived at JFK, mercifully in 35 minutes, and got to the check-in counter there was a long line. There were two flights departing at 6 am, and no one to check us in until 4:50 am, on a day when another major carrier had pulled 900 flights. When I got to the counter, it was discovered that while AA had made me a reservation, they hadn't issued me a ticket number, and we were in danger of missing the 30 minute mark, endangering my luggage. I got on the phone with AA and was able to straighten that out in time, but then, because of the nature of my ticket, I was pulled aside at the security checkpoint for additional screening. It was the first time ever, so it was about time, but to do it within 25 minutes of my flight's departure seemed a little much. It also meant boarding the plane without coffee, food or water. Grrr.

I did manage to sleep most of the way to SFO, where I finally got breakfast and water, and then flew back to PHX, in the window seat of the very last row of the airplane. I extricated myself from the long metal tube, suffered the overly cheerful shuttle bus driver, claimed my Impala, and headed off through the desert to The Clarendon, in the hopes of an hour poolside before my first meeting.