It’s been quite a while since I’ve went from one weekend to the next feeling like alot has happened. I went to Melbourne FL for business this week, and when I wasn’t predisposed to meetings I took the time to get out of my hotel room and shoot pictures. I shot about 120 pictures, but I only have about 8 worthy of sharing. Alot of the pictures I took were of birds and trying to capture them doing something cool, but apparently I need a bigger zoom lens to shoot good wildlife pictures.

Yesterday, though, was pretty cool. I had a flight out of Orlando at 9:54 AM, but due to weather and mechanical troubles I ended up getting rebooked for another flight. My options were either to make a 5PM connection (instead of 1PM) in Atlanta, which would have left me sitting around in the Atlanta airport for 4 hours, or take a nonstop to Dayton at 7:17PM. I ended up going with the nonstop, because I thought that was the only way I’d get a free roundtrip ticket that they were actually offering all of us Dayton travelers.

So I started thinking about what I’d do in Orlando for the next couple of hours… I effectively had about 7 hours to kill at that point. I contemplated getting a cab to go down to International Drive, but I was holding a laptop bag that was particularly heavy and a backpack with some real estate books and my camera, and I honestly didn’t want to walk around town carrying all that crap… it would have been a screaming “MUG ME!” sign.

I had lunch at the Airport, and while I was figuring out what I could be doing, I saw red cross workers leaving the restaurant area and remembered that there was a relief effort at the Airport. So, I figured… what the hell.

I ended up helping the team at Orlando with making sure refugees got tickets and made flights to their relatives for 7 hours. It wasn’t all that stressful, but now I think I will sign up to be official on the Disaster Relief Team. I think at the very least it will help me learn to deal with managing an emergency response, and I think as an Officer that would be a good experience to gain.

-TJ