Strange airport happenings

I made what turned out to be a great decision last night to fly home from Atlanta rather than taking the packed, nasty ass van. Some strange things happened at the airport and on the plane, however, that I will now share.

Rob and I flew on AirTran through a program called "X-Fares." It's a pretty cool program, and allows you to fly anywhere that AirTran flies for only $69 per segment of your journey. One caveat, though: you have to fly standby. So we were both put on the standby list for the 10:59 to Pittsburgh. This would all be great, except that flying standby on a Sunday night, according to the ticketing agent, isn't the best idea in the world. The flight was overbooked, so we had to hope for some noshows in order to get on the plane. They boarded the plane, and we walk up to the gate agent along with 3 other guys who were also on standby. They were also on spring break, two of them from UPJ and one from Duquesne. The gate agent notifies us that there are two seats left, and calls the names of two of the three guys that were also waiting. They kindly defer the tickets to us...when the gate agent says "oh wait, we have four seats left." One of the guys waiting says "oh, ok, let's just take those." Thankfully, one of the other guys tells him that they can just stay overnight with his cousin or something and get drunk...so they all agree to give the seats to Rob and I. Rob seals the deal with a handshake, after which there was no turning back. The gate agent prints out our tickets and we run onto the plane before the other guys can change their minds.

Oh, did I mention, Mike Yanchak showed up at our gate a few minutes before boarding began. More on that later.

We're about 20 minutes outside of Pittsburgh, and are making the descent through the clouds. I'm looking out the window of the plane, with no visability because of the clouds, and thinking some morbid thoughts about how weird it'd be if the plane crashed and those guys in Atlanta were thinking....wow, if we woulda got on that plane....... I was also thinking about the RSD posts about 3 Pitt Ultimate players dying in a plane crash (Sean was on the plane too). About two minutes later, still looking out the window, I see a huge white light that encompases the whole window - probably the brightest light I had ever seen. There may have also been a noise associated with it...I don't remember, because the light was so overpowering. I flinch really hard, and then start looking around the cabin...which was a pointless proposition, because I couldn't see anything having been blinded temporarily by the flash of light. I start looking around, saying "what the fuck was that" to Rob who was sitting next to me and overheard by Yanchak who was in the row in front of us. Yan quickly asks if the lights in the plane had gone out (I still couldn't tell), and notices that they were still on. My vision is slowly returning, and the passengers on the flight are all wondering what happened. Yanchak thinks that the plane got hit by lightning. All I know was that it was fuckin scary as hell. A few minutes later, the pilot comes on the speaker and tells us that we will be on the ground in 12 minutes, which made me feel a whole lot better. While exiting the plane, I asked the pilot what it was. He called it a "static discharge" from the storm that we were flying through. I'm pretty sure that means lightning. I asked him if he was blinded by it like I was...and he said yes. They have autopilot, right?

Yan drove Sean, Rob, and I home from the airport. Thanks Yan!

Also, there was a senior marketing major from Pitt on the plane sitting next to us named Annie or Anne...not sure which, but I called her Annie --> http://pitt.facebook.com/profile.php?id=14200420. Josh, take note.