It was sad to say goodbye to everybody, especially my brother, because he’s so great and I only see him maybe twice a year. Stephanie was staying for the rest of the week, so she took me to the airport, where I discovered I’d been bumped up to first class again. SCORE.

The return was uneventful except for the fact that we landed on the new runway, and I realized it doesn’t actually go directly over the mall (more like over 24th Ave), which means we’re unlikely to see an A330 go plummeting into the Mall of America anytime soon (still undecided about whether that’s a good or bad thing). Also, right as we landed, a woman across the aisle started yelling, ‘NAVY! NAVY!’ to our massive confusion, until she excitedly began to proclaim that she could always tell the difference between pilots who came from the Navy vs the Air Force, because Navy pilots stopped short as if they were landing on an aircraft carriers. And here I was thinking they just had to get to the right taxiway because that’s what the control tower told them to do.

Huh.