“Here’s what you should do in Philly: Eat a cheese-steak sandwich, experience the horrible weather, and then get the hell out of here.”

– A Philly native to me.

Within five minutes of walking into the Dallas airport I had already gotten in a small disagreement with another person over who was first in line.

I vowed to keep my cool on my next leg.

So when my Raleigh to Philly flight was delayed, I kept calm and waited patiently. Delayed for an hour. Then another hour. Then another hour. 6 hours later, our flight took off.

While I was waiting patiently, most everyone else on my flight shouted and screamed and got transferred onto other, earlier flights.

Learned my lesson. If you want to get your way at the airport, you need to be a monster.

The only good thing to come from my long delay was — for those of us who waited out the delays — all racial and age divisions melted away and we all shared our travel war stories. We literally went around the room and talked about how long we’d been in the airport, how the hotel messed up a reservation, how many hours we’d driven in a rental car, etc. I, of course, couldn’t stop laughing.

Common goals bring together uncommon people.

At Burger King in King of Prussia, PA (just outside Philly). College age girls sitting next to me. One of them has exactly the same laugh as Marissa Mayer. Drove me nuts.

I’m sure they’re related.

Three excellent schools (UNC, Duke, NC State), friendly folk, and plenty of high tech / business infrastructure make RTP another great little ecosystem in America.

Had dinner in the tobacco district of Raleigh. This sign loomed large: