To Baltimore

I slept pretty well considering the 6 hour time difference. I woke up at around 6am (noon Spain time). I went out for a walk/run. Came back, did a little Spanish practice. Then, I went to Einstein Bagels to get breakfast. I had a pumpernickel bagel with cream cheese. It was excellent. When I got back to Rachel's house, she was up and heading to her 9:30am econometrics class. It was the first day of her new semester.

I showered and went out to Walmart to get a list of things we can't find in Spain: advil, mucinex, Pilot G-2 pens, dental floss, deodorant etc. Just to be clear, most of these things can be found in Spain, but not the brands or amounts we're interested in. I drove the Honda. The little lizard that took up residence in the side view mirror:

was gone.

After my Walmart trip, I worked until Rachel came home from work around 2pm. We took in a quick lunch at Taco Bell and dessert at ChillN Nitrogen Ice Cream shop:


The ice cream was excellent, as always. We went back to Rachel's and I helped her install GitHub for her new class.

***

My flight to Baltimore for the math conference left Ft Lauderdale at 7:20pm. With the gov't shutdown still going, I was concerned about back ups at TSA security, so I decided to try to get there 2 hours in advance. To save Rachel the long, congested drive up there to FLL, I took the Miami metro, transferred to the TriRail, transferred to a shuttle bus and got to FLL in 2 hrs--about 90 mins before my flight. No worries about TSA, the lines were empty and I got through right away. I killed an hour at the gate, endured another 2 hours of flying, got to BWI at around 9:45pm, walked to the light rail station at the far end of the airport and caught the train downtown to my hotel. Here's one of the many forms of transportation I encountered on my trip:

The TriRail at the transfer point just north of the Miami airport:

I got to the hotel around 10:30pm. My roommate, Scott, was already there. We chatted a bit and I dropped into bed.