seat 12J

I'm up at 4:30 am, and it's too early to think.

By 5:30, we've picked up Mom and are driving to the airport. I'm well on my way to a full blown panic attack. As much as I love to travel, I'm really bad at it. Actually, the worst part is the trip to the airport.

By the time we get there, I'm ok. We check in, spend a little time in the united red carpet room and then head for the gate.

united LAX-IAD
It's been a long time since I've flown business class and I have to say, seat 12J is pretty darn nice. It's not often when you can't touch the seat in front of you (for those of us who are regularly back in coach). We're offered a pre-flight drink (water or OJ, hey,it's early!) and we take off. The flight is easy, we have a full breakfast of a pretty bad frittata, fruit, warm croissant and some scary sausage. I watch Marie Antoinette, and while I generally like Sophia Copola movies, I find it had to be sympathetic to this queen. After the movie, I sleep a bit and then suddenly, we're here.
Fortunately, we're on the same concourse and we have a couple of hours before our flight to Vienna on Austrian Airlines. Austrian doesn't have a business lounge here, so we head for the closest Red Carpet room which turns out to be (what feels like) a 3 mile hike away in the next terminal. "Oh, it's just through there"...20 minutes of walking and we are finally there. The lounge is packed and we and we find seats in a far corner. I'm hoping to get online and I think "score!", the DC airport has free WiFi. Unfortunately, I cannot figure out how to get it to connect to the internet. Everyone around me seems to be on their laptop, so it could just be me. Who knows? I hope this is not a preview of the rest of the trip.

On the way back to our departure gate we see the red carpet room in terminal D, right across from where we had deplaned. Boy, do we feel dumb. I guess it really was closer than we thought.