It’s Turkey Week!
I will be heading out to Connecticut on Wednesday to hang out with my family in the middle of nowhere.
I’m not too concerned about travel, not on the way there, anyway. The way home could be a different matter. I fly LAX to Dulles to Hartford going, and Hartford to O’Hare to LAX. It’s the O’Hare part that worries me, I have a 45 minute or so layover, plus that’s the one airport where I’ve been stuck on a runway forever…we’re talking six hours or so.
That experience was probably the worst thing that’s ever happened to me traveling, which on the one hand is saying something, on the other…it probably means I’ve been fairly lucky. 
The flight was originally delayed due to the flight crew not being there. The flight they were on was late. Their flight got in about an hour late, and we were finally put on the plane.
The plane was something like 25th in line for takeoff. We waited, and waited, and waited….then they said something was wrong with the plane. But, they could fix it while we were on the runway, if we went back to the gate, everything would take longer.
So the plane was moved to an out of the way spot on the runway, and we waited some more. This was where the six hours comes in.
My flight was supposed to have left at 3pm. At 11:30 pm, we returned to the gate. They couldn’t fix the problem, and needed to use another plane. Believe it or not, there was a plane available, and that flight was going to leave at 12:30am.
We were all offered hotel rooms, meal tickets for the airport and rebooking on the first flight in the morning. I’d say maybe 80% of the people took the airline up on their offer, by then, everyone was just frustrated and tired and annoyed. Not angry, not anymore, just tired and in need of sleep.
I only wanted to get home and sleep in my own bed. I really didn’t want to wake up in the morning and have to go through all of this again. And I did finally make it home, on that second flight, at about 4am.
I’ve been stuck in London and Las Vegas overnight, once because of an obnoxious agent, once because of bad weather. I’ve had countless flights delayed or canceled…I even had an entire TRIP canceled by an airline because of weather.
But this…this was unbelievable. See, I finished my book about 3 hours in, and didn’t have anything else to read. I was talking to a friend on AIM (after 1/2 hr they gave up on the “no cellphones” thing), but my treo’s battery was nearly gone. I was going to die of boredom!!
Fortunately, a couple of really cool guys went around the plane and got me two more books. I can’t even remember what they were right now, but I read them cover to cover. I was also able to get into my luggage when the planes were switched, and grabbed another book out of there.
I travel with three books now, as well as my power cords for my cell phone. I’ve had moments since where I ended up going through all three books, and had to charge my battery in the middle of an airport.
Wednesday I’m going to be traveling all day. I leave here at noon, I land in Hartford around 11:30pm. But at least traveling means hours and hours to read a good book…or three. “Always be prepared,” right? I was a good Girl Scout. Is that really a surprise to anyone?
