Real Flying Ramblings

Early last week I flew out of Midway to Ft Meyers for Thanksgiving holiday.  As I approached the airport on Cicero Avenue, which now runs between the airport, I was stopped at a stoplight.  A Northwest DC9 was spooling up her engines to take off...and wow, what power.  I was at least about 100ft away from the airport, and my car was vibrating from the ol' DC9.  I have never seen a DC9 before and it was a noisy and amazing sight.  I also got to see my first B717 as well, there are none that operate at Ohare, which is my regular airport.   This was my first flight on Southwest and they are an OK airline, I was just kind of annoyed with the lack of assigned seating and boarding procedures...but the all leather seats on their B737-700s were nice and comfy.  I was hoping to catch some special liveries at Midway but did not see any.  My flight yesterday back into Midway was interesting.  I am very comfortable flying, but landing at Midway did kind of tense me up some.  With the plane rocking from the heavy 20-25mph wind gusts, the approach was interesting.  And to make things worse, in the back of my mind I was thinking about the Southwest B737-700 that overran the runway last winter on landing...that was going through my mind the entire time as we were slowing down...not until the reverse thrusters were disengaged did I feel comfortable.  The new airport at Ft Meyers was nice, but the food in concourse D was kind of sparse to choose from.  But in concourse D I did get to see jetBlue, which I had not seen before (but coming soon to Ohare).