Thanks for your advice! There was indeed plenty of time to get back to LGA with the 3:30 bus (Not that it mattered; surely you heard what happened at LGA yesterday, ick. That's 2 for 2 on running into a 5-hour storm delay leaving from LGA; I didn't have this problem when I flew into JFK the one time.) In fact, the worst traffic was what we encountered on the way in on Thursday morning; I believe we departed about 8:40am or so. That trip took about 40-50 minutes. The other three trips were about half that.

We did indeed walk from Marine Air Terminal to Hertz that Friday morning after the bus dropped us there at barely 6am. It was a nasty walk really because of the humidity, but no traffic, and we weren't sure when/if the Hertz bus might show up. On the way back we got them to run us over there to catch the bus to Manhattan, as I knew that would be its last stop before leaving LGA.

The non-gate areas of LGA seem actually quite nice now. Those rockers, by the way, are between C and D and between A and B. Between B and C is where the big opening to the food court below is. And I spent a lot of time down there, staring at gate C4 to see if my plane would ever turn up. It did, finally, about 10:30. I was lucky that I checked in so early; there were two AirTran flights back to Pittsburgh scheduled for 5:35 and 7:40, and they cancelled the 5:35. A good portion of pax stayed an extra night in NY it would seem, and AirTran's ATL pax fared even worse. The lines for AA and UA looked to be a couple hours long or more, wrapped all the way into the corridor behind the check-in desks. It was getting much emptier by 10:40 or so when I left.