Day 1 - Peoria to where?

The plan was to work a half day, gather my bags, scratch Jinkies under the chin and head out of Peoria on a flight to Detroit with the final destination of Mesa, AZ, home of the Chicago Cubs Spring Training facility.

I now sit at the airport bar giving my thumbs a mini workout while I await the call for boarding my flight to Atlanta. Yep, Atlanta is not Detroit.

After my first pass through airport security, I sat at the bar to pass the time watching some NCAA tournament basketball. During a commercial break I checked my email from my handy dandy smart phone and saw my flight changed to 40 minutes later. leaving just 20 minutes to catch my connecting flight, I think not!

Begrudgingly I pass by security to head back to checkin. As of right now, I will say that Delta has accommodated me nicely. Sure I fly through Atlanta now and arrive an hour later, but my longest leg of the flight... Well my butt will be treated to the cushy seats of 1st Class.

Fingers crossed it goes smoothly from here on out. I'm going to rest my thumbs for the time being.

I'm on a plane to Phoenix, and sure enough, my tush is flying in style. How much does this first class thing normally cost?

Well, whatever it is, I'll try to consume enough free stuff to fully take advantage. I'm watching live TV on FOX, downed one Baileys, pocketed a headset, munched on some peanuts, and have two bottles of water to wash down at my convenience. And, I'm only 30 minutes in.

I think I should start a list:

- Movie of my choice, Secret Life of Walter Mitty

- Placemat for pullout tray

- Hot towel

- Can't forget the pillow

- Baileys round 2

- Dinner: hot turkey swiss & bacon with lettuce and pickle, grapes, pineapple, cantaloupe, chips and a cookie

I gotta say, it was one tasty meal.

The flight was around 3.5 hours, so it didn't leave me enough time to watch another movie. I was going to try to fit in the movie Frozen, but the slow beginning wasn't keeping my attention. At this point I was probably driving my seatmate nuts by clicking around on my TV screen.

Since it was dark out and I was curious about the accuracy of the flight tracker, well that's where I settled in at for the remaining ZERO minutes of our flight. I'm quite pleased we didn't land at 28,012 feet.

I could really get used to that whole first class thing. It was nice to be pampered, but more importantly, it was great to land safely and meet up with Tom and Jim at baggage claim. Mesa, here we come!