Ben is...: Ben is a traveling man.

I fly to San Francisco every two weeks to visit Grace.

It is a flight that averages 1hr and 20 minutes in duration and is approximately 470 miles.

I fly either Virgin America (preferred due to Elevate frequent flier program), Southwest or United Airlines.

This past weekend was an unplanned trip to SFO as I will be there two more weekends in May (May 15th for Jeff's graduation with Neil and Lorna and by myself on Memorial Day) I found a $38 ticket from SAN to SFO on Southwest and a $69 ticket from SFO back to SAN on United on Sunday.

My luck flying on Friday afternoons has been terrible. My last flight in April on Southwest was delayed 45 minutes and that is not the worst I have had to deal with. On this particular Friday it was raining in the Bay Area and that usually means a terrible delay for me. I arrived at the airport an hour before my flight at 7:20PM, which is early for most people but I have to be prompt and on time. I had called before hand to request to be notified of any changes in schedule via phone. No phone call so I decide to go through security into the the gates... as soon as I get to Gate 8 I see that the flight is delayed 1.5hours and now leaves at 9:10. LAME. Oh whoops, here is an incoming call from Southwest telling me that the flight is now late. I wish I knew like 15 minutes ago before I went through security. So I sit there, read my magazine, go on Facebook, eat a BJs deepdish personal pizza... and I look up at the 42" LCD that displays the gate's flight activity.

OH SHIT. Flight is now delayed to 11:30PM. It was now 7:45PM.

It so happens that the adjacent gate had a flight to San Jose that left at 8:00PM that had just received 4 openings for standby passengers. I rush my way to the counter, phone in hand dialing Grace, and I confirm my seat to San Jose. San Jose is about 45-50 minutes from Downtown San Francisco, so you would imagine Grace was not very fond of my decision. She came around when we both figured we would be able to save about 3 hours and we could check out a lounge she wanted to go to for a while.

An hour and 10 minutes later, and two new friendships (the guy on the left of me was a 52 yr old diehard Charger Fan Vato from Spring Valley that was visiting his childhood friends in Portland. The guy on the right of me was a 6'5" basketball playing 25 yr old Russian born Software Engineer that worked at Qualcomm and had the iPhone SDK on his Macbook. AWESOME) I was in San Jose and my wonderful weekend could finally begin...

The disgusting traffic at the terminal at San Jose International.

Street lights glowing...

Here are some pictures from my way back to SD on Sunday night, I got bored waiting for a 30 minute delayed flight (yes, delayed flight again) so here you go.