Gitmo Travelogue, Sat & Sun, 19/20 Sep (Gitmo-JAX-San Diego)

We got up, had breakfast and drove over to the ferry landing for the 9:30 ferry run to the leeward side. We got to the air terminal, did security & whatnot and then sat around forever until the flight was called to board, around 1:30. The flight was full, so it was a good thing I checked in on Friday. The flight was an easy flight to Jacksonville and after I got my suitcase, I had the duty driver take me to the Navy Lodge. Up at 3am on Sunday for the 4am ride to the Jacksonville airport. I was so early, I was the first guy to check in curbside (had to wait for the skycap to boot up the computers) and was the 1st or 2nd passenger thru the security checkpoint. The flight left Jax and when we got near Atlanta, I (and my rowmate) both noticed that the plane was orbiting Atlanta; we knew there was some weather there, but didn't know how bad. We landed 30 min late and the airport was chaos with
planes landing late, taking off late, etc. Delta has help-counters in the 2 terminals I was in and they were both mobbed with people trying to get their trips straightened out. I had a 3 hr layover in ATL that turned into almost 4 hrs because the plane that was coming into Atlanta to go to San Diego was late landing (of course, given the weather). We boarded and then the plane taxied out and got into a line of at least 20 planes waiting to take off. We waited for about 5-10 min and then the captain came on and said that another runway had been opened for takeoff and we were first in line for it, so off we went. 4 hours later, I was in San Diego.