The lower-tier chains seem to compete with ever more
substantial "continental" breakfasts. The one here features
the usual muffins (2 kinds), breakfast breads, and cereal
but augments this with bacon, scrambled eggs, and sausage
gravy with biscuits. Not so fancy as what I've had at the
Best Western, but way more food than necessary. Sadly, I
was the only one there at 9 am to partake of this bounty.
It was decent food, though as usual with free sausage
gravy, there was very little sausage.

Went back to the room and did some work before taking my
shower and checking out.

Community Days
I discovered to my chagrin that there was no transportation
offered between the old and new terminals and was told by
the uninterested lady at the information booth that I'd
have to rustle up a cab. The taxi was 19 and change, almost
as much as it costs to go downtown. It's several miles to go
clockwise around the airport, and there is no obvious way
to do it counterclockwise. Khalif the driver decided to join
me for the tour, a good thing as there is no provision for
either dropoff or pickup at this point. We parked with
everyone else in the lot and went in to see what's what.

It's a big-city facility, 50 domestic and 3 international
gates, check-in stations that look like the ones in SIN
and HKG, lots of glass and chrome steel, that modern airy
feel. It also will take about 5 times as long to get from
ticketing to the United gates as it used to. Pretty
impressive. At the United gates, speaking of which, they
were giving out Hemispheres magazines and stuff, but on
hearing that I was a 1K, I got a "thank you for being a
United star" tchotchke and a copy of The Age of Flight
(thanks to JerseyJoe for telling me about this); Khalif
got the stuff too, as I introduced him to Bob at the gate
as my driver for the day. American was giving out pens and
fridge magnets. Southwest had a raffle for tickets. The
Frontier and US Air booths were abandoned.

At security, they are really pushing hard for the virtual
frisking machines, handing out propaganda on how effective
but privacy-preserving they are. Sigh. I really don't want
people knowing what color my underwear is. [joke]

We got to go out on the tarmac and look at the fire and
maintenance equipment, a great treat for children of all
ages (cf. the SZG Do and its pictures of numerous FTers
gleefully investigating the interior of the big firefighting
machine there). Then, after looking at the innards of the
baggage handling operation, it was time to go. The suggested
time allowance was 2 hours; I saw everything I wanted to see
in just over an hour. Back to the airport and to try for the
3:56 flight, so I could get a desk at an ORD RCC and do some
work for 4 extra hours. I was 1 on the waitlist, but nobody
got on off this list. There is a 5:26 CRJ, but I didn't want
that, and the next mainline wasn't until 7:06. Ah, well. The
7:06 was showing plenty of availability in F.

Funny thing about the 3:56, TSA had three of its finest
harass random people at the gate, except the people weren't
so random - mostly women with handbags. Saw some guy hand
over his bulging briefcase only to be hastily shooed away.

Oh, and before this, when I arrived, during a slack period,
I laboriously unloaded both laptops each into its own bin,
took off jacket and shoes, blah blah, and the gal pushed my
stuff through, saying, "all set?" as she did so. I saw my
computer bag go in and wailed, "my liquids are still in
there." She wasn't fazed in the slightest, and the x-ray
watcher either didn't see them or let them go through.