A long flight, with a change in Chicago, gets me to Pittsburgh for a meeting. The flight to Chicago was clear skies all the way, and the views over the mountains, as well as the final approach over night time Chicago were amazing. I snapped a lot of shots during the first part of the flight. It was a tough choice selecting the one on the right from the collection.
The second leg was not so good… first the flight was packed. Next there was no space left for my luggage, so United’s cabin crew insisted on checking it rather than asking the people storing their coats and laptops in the overhead bins to move them (or, for that matter, getting the people who had not stowed their luggage the correct way around to fix that). Then they decided not to place these checked hand luggage bags in the hold of the plane we were on, but instead send it on the next one – arriving several hours later. We had to wait until the carousel stopped delivering bags, and then ask an agent in Pittsburgh to even discover this. And there was no apology for it; in fact, it sounded as though it was a perfectly normal.
Downtown Pittsburgh, where the Courtyard by Marriott I am staying in is located, seems to be quiet at night (it was after 10pm when I finally got here). It was cold too, but not anywhere near as cold as I was expecting. Not far from the hotel is a large Christmas tree in the centre of an outdoor ice rink. Everything else seemed to be closed or closing, so not much chance to get a feel for the city tonight, and I fly home tomorrow afternoon. Maybe another time I’ll get to spend some time here and check out the area.
Update: Now United can’t confirm whether or not the bag even made it on the next flight. And they cannot contact anybody at Pittsburgh airport or the courier services that they use to deliver “delayed” baggage. Guess it won’t be here for the morning. In fact, they cannot even state with certainty what time the plane it was meant to be on arrived – it says it landed a little early at 11:36pm in one place, but in another it says it arrived late at 12:20am! If they can’t keep track of the arrival times of their planes, what hope is there that they can keep track of a small carry-on bag?
A one day trip to Reno (Nevada) for Boxing day did not generate many opportunities for photos. Perhaps next time we go up there (perhaps New Year’s day) I will get more shots, especially given the large snow storms that they have experienced this week. If not, it will need to wait for our Tahoe trip later in January.
While in Hawaii I noticed that several places were selling pre-matted photos from local photographers. Luckily, most of these photos had a bio of the photographer on the back, often including a website. So, here’s a collection of links to these sites, in no particular order. The photo on the right, by Tom Yim of 
