So, I am on my way to San Diego, stop over in DFW, in GRAPEVINE, TX!!! Dang, this is the biggest cluster **** of an airport I have EVER been in. Terminals seem to be put here in a helter skelter arrangement, and the seating is just plain stupid over here in terminal D. Isn't there someone on Fchat who can fix this by the time I fly back through here on Monday?? Oh, and I thought it never rained in Texas. What's this stuff I see out the dirty terminal windows? Clouds and rain. Sheesh. I am soooooooo disappointed. Oh, and thanks for coming out to the airport to welcome me with a big ol' Texas, HOWDY!! Dave
Dave...Welcome to (usually) sunny Texas! And, oh by the way, Terminal D is the nice one. Head over to one of the others and you'll see just how good you got it in terminal D. Safe travels & have a great weekend in lovely SD. T p.s. I have no pull to "fix it" by Monday, no one does.
DFW makes up for its chaotic design by having one of the highest concentrations of beautiful women in any airport in the U.S. Enjoy the sights. We put them there for you as our Texas emissaries. 2cam
Terminal D has some good restaurants/places for drinks. Upstairs either Reatta or Three Forks. Cantina Laredo downstairs. Be happy you are not in the middle of a storm right now. Been having those and more predicted. Jeff
Forecast for next monday, and all of next week - more rain/storms! Does your airline offer Float equipped aircraft? As for DFW - once you figure out the interesting road layout, it's actually all rather logical. However, the biggest PITA, and the thing I hate the most - is that when flying AA - you almost never come back to the same terminal that you departed from. That adds an extra 15 to 30 minutes to get around the airport. At night, when they only run the train in one direction - it could be even longer. Oh - and the other thing I really, really hate - is that there are 2 runways way the heck out there. Way past the 4 big parallel runways. The far east runway is especially a long way from the terminals. Makes for a long, long taxi in. Sid
Coming from someone who travels almost every week out of DFW - I can say that it is a pretty good airport if you live here, but not so great if you have to rent a car or for connections. And I actually prefer terminal A & C over D. D just seems to have no rhyme or reason to it, the parking is confusing and the signage is terrible. A&C are very easy to figure out - if your flight is leaving from gate C20, you park at C20 and walk across the street. But it is a crap shoot if you return to a different terminal.
The new parking system in A is great. Makes it super easy to find an open spot. Now, if they would just finish up the exit! I just parked at D this week - for the first time in a while. They also have the new parking system.
I actually don't mind dfw and how its organized. Its easy to get around once you get the hang of it. I don't like however the greedy extortion fee they charge just to drive through the airport when picking someone up. Nor the extortion fee parking rates when leaving your car there. I fly out of love field just to avoid both the pickup fee and the parking fees from dfw, nothing i hate more than being nickel and dimed.
So Dave, you just flew through to b!tch at us? I watch planes land from my office on the East side, and Robs close by on the Northwest. Never have a long layover at DFW without reaching out.
Yup, Just passin' through on the the way to my kid's gradiation!! 1st lawyer in the family, and not a moment too soon!! Dave Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
And you think it would be a good idea to scout the women with my lovely, beautiful wife sitting right next to me? I will have to be VERY circumspect. D
I'll have to Google circumspect, but if it means staring without your wife telling you to act your age, then please do so. Congrats on the new grad on the family. T
It does and I will. Thanks, my kid worked very hard to get to this point. Very hard. And I am damn proud of him. D
Hey guys. Unrelated question. What's with the hats??? How many people really still wear cowboy hats? I saw a decent percentage at the airport (but certainly less than 5% overall) and suspect most were guys going back home from Texas as they ALL appeared to be brand new. Do many Texans wear a cowboy hat anymore? Just askin', not a value judgment, just curious. Dave
Before I moved to Texas, I also thought cowboy hats was a Hollywood thing, but a lot more folks around here wear them than I would have guessed. To this city slicker, they seem more prevalent if you go to the small towns out to the west of the Metroplex, and if you are at a more formal affair…T
A cowboy will have a few hats. Work hats, dress hats, etc. If you saw them in the airport, chances are good they were the dress hats and are more taken care of. They're pretty common on the Ft. Worth side, not as much towards Dallas. A neighbor ALWAYS has his hat on. I first saw his hair about 6 months ago because it was hot. It's even on indoors.
I spend a lot of time driving between the 5 major cities in Texas. Austin, Dallas, El Paso, Houston, and San Antonio. In the metropolitan areas you rarely see cowboy hats, and they are more common in the rural areas where the hats are more of a functional item. I would say that cowboy hats are more common in the southwest then other areas of the country. Of the people in Texas wearing cowboy hats, they can probably be broken down to 3 main groups. 1. The people that wear them for function because they work outside, such as ranchers, farmers, oil field workers, etc... 2. People attempting to project some form of image statement. 3. Tourists. This is similar to people wearing baseball hats. Functional purposes (protection from the sun), or attempting to project some form of image (i.e. Flat brim, wearing brim sideways, or wearing brim backwards.). Of course the last category is a vague area. I have been know to wear my ball cap backwards for functional purposes such as using a camera, binoculars, or riding a roller coaster. Of course when I lived in LA and traveled between LA and SF, or headed into the Sierras, there were a lot of areas just as rural as parts of TX where people wore cowboy hats as well. But there I would suspect wearing cowboy hats was more of a functional item.
Having lived in both I think they are nearly as common in rural California as in rural Texas. Difference is no one notices a cowboy hat on a guy in a suit in Texas. In California you'll hear about it. Some seem to forget California is in the west too and agricultural production is top in the country and nearly twice that of Texas which is #2. Lots of cowboy hats in the central valley. I saw a cowboy hard hat the other day. Never seen that in California.
Gitchu a Platinum card and go to the new Centurian Lounge, set up by AmEx as a (well deserved) thumb in AA's eye.
Sending this from a flight back to DFW. I just connected in LaGuardia coming back from Canada and all I can say is that I love DFW even more after that cluster.
Oh, I am not saying I've never been in worse airports, because I certainly have. Just sayin' it seemed to have more than it's fair share of disaster written all over it. Coming back home yesterday, we got waylaid in DFW, AGAIN, because American couldn't get its gates figured out, had to shuffle planes all over, and we switched terminals once, and gates twice. On the UPSIDE, the folks working in the airport were unfailingly polite, and the service in the airport restaurant we visited was FAST and polite. A double win. And as to the cowboy hat thing. I'd guess posers, tourists mostly, as the hats were ALL new and no one had a working tan that I could see. And yes, the women folk are very pretty. But my wife is no slouch either. D
Every single person I meet that has moved here from somewhere else always says the same thing, people here are polite and friendly. I told friends back in California it is like waking up in an episode of the Twilight Zone where everyone is happy and friendly. Everyplace has stuff and nowhere is perfect but it is a far more civil society than anywhere I have spent any time.
Might you be able to stem the flow of lunatics coming this direction? Now out of Boulder, known locally as '25 sq miles surrounded by reality', driving to work is a joy. Driving into Boulder.... a 'stubby and a double shot Americanna is what's for breakfast'... and then 20 under the speed limit.... looks like a C&C movie! I think I have a picture of Keegan wearing one of my cowboy hats and Carhart bibs during the floods here, Priceless! Function over fashion out here, something has to keep the sun and rain off your neck when your fixing fence.
I guess that depends on the relationship that you have with your wife. To put it in car terms, you have a Ferrari, but just because you already have a Ferrari, it doesn't mean that you can't or don't appreciate the beauty of other Ferraris. My beautiful wife of 17 years likes to point out other "Ferraris" to me. Congratulations!!! Cool stuff! I'm a 5th generation Texan and haven't had a cowboy hat in over 15 years. Even then it was a bent-to-hell, straw hat that was used primarily for float/canoe trips, fishing, yard work, and outdoor concerts/festivals. We essentially have only one family member that regularly wears a cowboy hat these days and he's well into his 70s. 2cam