Downtown Richmond

I've had a pretty crappy day up to this point (around 5pm). It seemed every task I encountered today was a real hassle. It started with checking out of the hotel in Atlanta. I had to wait behind a man who spoke no english while the TWO people behind the desk dealt with him for 20 minutes.

This put me slightly behind schedule for getting to my flight on time. I still had to refill the gas on the rental car before turning it in. I could not find a gas station by driving around, so I pulled over and pulled up the directions to the nearest gas station on my TOMTOM gps. I spent 10 minutes driving to it and it was closed up (out of business). I plugged "airport" back into TOMTOM and it took me by a gas station on the way, so I filled up there. I was about 30 minutes behind my intended schedule at this point.

I then returned the car to Hertz and had to go in and give them the voucher from Sportvision - so they wouldn't charge my credit card for it. The guy I dealt with decided to do all of this in the computer with 1 hand, while he held his coffee cup in the other. It took him almost 15 minutes. When he was done - I ran out the door and tried to catch the shuttle bus to the airport, but even though they had not pulled away from the curb, the driver looked at me standing beside the closed door and slowly drove away. I then had to wait for the next bus.

The next task was surprisingly short - I checked in immediately with Delta - with no undue delays.

THEN, it was time for security. They have 2 lines in Atlanta that both snake around beside each other. Woudn't you know it - I picked the slowest one while the other one just whizzed by. When I finally got up to the screener, I very efficiently placed all my stuff into 2 plastic bins and put them on the conveyor belt. I walked through the metal detector and waited for my stuff to come out the other side.
The bag in front of mine must of had something in it that the woman screener didn't like and so she stopped the belt (with all my stuff still in the xray machine) and in an almost whispering voice, she said: "bag check". Well no one heard her and she didn't care that no one heard her. She just sat there all kicked back for about 3 minutes and again said very softly "bag check". Then she just sat there longer. I turned to another TSA guy who was standing there waiting for it all to get moving again and told him that she needed a bag check. He just shrugged his shoulders and kept standing there. WHAT A BUNCH OF IDIOTS!!!! Then, another guy came up and asked what was going on. She said she needed a bag check. Then he started talking with her and the other TSA guy about their work schedule without even dealing with the bag. There were about a half dozen people there who were ready to kill these idiots. It was as bad as going into McDonalds sometimes.

Finally, they got things moving and I got my stuff. I looked at my watch and had 30 minutes until my flight and it was only 1 concourse away, so I asked the name of the idiot woman and then asked who I could complain to. I found the supervisor and let him know that his 'elevated' position of supervisor was going to have him listen to a complaint. Then I let him have it. I was so pissed off. He was smart enough to say he would handle it and he was sorry it happened. Probably nothing will come of it, but he was smart in the way he handled it.

I then made it to gate A9 where they announced that our plane was having maintenance problems and they sent us to gate A20 where we waited for another plane to come in and take us away.

I got to Richmond about an hour later than I was supposed to. It took the luggage 45 minutes to show up in baggage claim. I then followed TOMTOM's directions to downtown Richmond to the "Radisson today - Doubletree tomorrow" hotel. It's changing names/owners tomorrow and the whole place is a mess. It's a fancy room once you get into it, but it's a total wreck everywhere else.

I needed some food, so I got walking directions from the desk clerk of how to get to Popkins Tavern. Things got better once I got there and had some food. It's a really cool place with 20 foot tin ceilings. Very old decor. After eating, I walked around a very old section of Richmond -with cobblestones showing through the deteriorating pavement. Here's some photos I took of the area.