From the Airport

I've been in Tennessee this week visiting another college as part of their accreditation process. The visit went well. It was a pleasure to meet the administrators and staff at the college and to learn more about their work. It is primarily a 2-year college offering associate degrees. Only in the last year have they started offering bachelor degrees, so they don't have any graduates yet from those programs. I had to remind myself at times that a 2-year institution is very different from a 4-year institution as I compared what they were doing with the accreditation standards. I didn't get a chance to really visit with any of the student or the alumni, but the members of the teams that did get to visit with them were very impressed with how loyal and how much these students and alumni appreciated the institution.

Monday was a travel day and meeting with the top administrators of the college for supper. Besides a 30-minute delay in my flight down, the day went smoothly and was very enjoyable.

Tuesday and Wednesday were a bit more work as we did interviews and worked on writing up the report. It took me a lot longer to write my report than I had anticipated, but the team was still done with our work by the time we headed to supper around 6:00.

Thursday morning, we had our final meeting with the top administrators and had completed our on-site responsibilities by 9:30 am. I and another woman on the team had flown in. Both of our flights were scheduled to go leave around 2:00 pm. Everyone else on the team drove, so we visited with them until they left at various times between 9:30 and 11:00. At 11:00, we last two members headed back to our rooms for final packing and to prepare to be picked up at 12:00 to head to the airport about 45 minutes away.

A few minutes after I got back to the room, the call came that my 2:30 flight was canceled. The next flight headed my direction was at 7:10. So I've been sitting at the airport since before 1:00 waiting for the flight that has been delayed until 8:13. The plane and the crew are here, so it looks like we are really on-track to board at 7:30 and leave as soon as everyone is on the plane.

Yesterday, here in Tennessee, there was a storm system that hit the area. High winds through the afternoon, tornado watch, and even briefly a tornado warning. Reports I'm hearing is that the same system is now in the northern Virginia area with 30mph wind and gusts up to 50+mph, but the temperature is still very warm (81 degrees?). (Hopefully the cold weather doesn't move into the area causing tornados.) The high winds was what caused the earlier flight to be canceled.

What I've learned about the TYS airport:
- It has a total of 12 gates.
- There is only one eating establishment past security, Ruby Tuesdays
- There is only one gift and snack shop past security
- There is one set of vending machines past security.
- There are
- There are rockers in the concourse where one can sit and watch the planes (at least some of them) taking off.