Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

July Family Visit Travelog #2
BNA Airport · Fri, 17 Jul 2026. 4:45pm.

After departing San Jose this morning we're now in Nashville awaiting our connection. Keyword: awaiting. We should be boarding right now, but the schedule's been jiggered around a bunch of times. Currently we're sitting on a delay of 1 hour 20 minutes. There's been an aircraft swap plus there are thunderstorm delays rippling across the system. The estimate has bounced around so much, out and back, that I'm not sure when we'll actually leave— and I don't think I will be sure until we're aboard the aircraft and turning onto the runway.

It's a good thing our schedule today isn't time-sensitive. I mean, it'll suck a bit not getting in until around midnight tonight, including our 2+ hour drive from DC, We can handle that. Where it'll start to really suck is if our connecting flight tonight is canceled due to weather and we have to (a) sleep in the terminal unless we can find a hotel room and are willing to pay whatever high-demand rate they charge, and (b) scramble to find seats on a flight tomorrow. I hope it doesn't come to that. (And no, that's not some imagined worst-case scenario. It's actually happened to me. Multiple times.)

Nonstop on a Red-eye, or This?

This reminds me of the wisdom of flying non-stop flights when traveling coast-to-coast. Connect somewhere mid-continent and it's bound to suck. In the winter there are blizzards. In the summer there are thunderstorms. In the fall and spring there are just random delays. Flying nonstop heads off a lot of the risks. Unfortunately the timings on non-stops didn't work for us this trip.

This trip we opted not to to take a red-eye like we have the past few trips out to the east coast. We've slept very poorly on the last several of them, leading to us being wrecked the next day and having to take naps. Then, because of having taken a nap it's harder to get on the local schedule. I've had a screwed-up sleep schedule for days the past two times It hasn't been a huge problem, thankfully, because I've had a low-impact itinerary with family, but it's still annoying to be out of phase with everyone. But maybe depending on how bad things get today I'll opt back into a nonstop red-eye next time.