Business Travel....and it's suckiness

Well, another trip was finally brought to an end with a 26 hour delay. Earlier this week I had traveled to New Orleans for business. I left Wednesday morning with that little feeling in my gut that it was not going to be a good idea...I had heard all the news reports about the weather and what was coming. I went anyway being the company trooper that I am....I paid for it in spades. Long story short...took care of the business that I needed to get to, actually had a chance to tour the 9th ward and was changed by what I saw (that experience will be noted in an upcoming blog when I have more time as it deserves that), and had some dinner at Kpals off of Bourbon Street which if your ever in New Orleans I would highly recommend. All in all the week was a good one, there were a couple things that were sub-par in my opinion. One, my hotel room was marked as non-smoking although it smelled like a stack in there. Two, the location of my hotel was literally at the end of one of the run ways so I was subjected to planes flying directly over the hotel at an altitude of about 150 feet. Three, when the week was finished I left for the airport and that is where things went tits up.

I arrived at the airport after dropping off the rental car. I looked for the American Airlines desk upon walking into the main terminal and to my horror there were many peoples standing in line, now I had arrived early BUT those were some long ass lines. I waited for one of the self service kiosks to open and tried to check in. It spat out my itinerary with a little message that said they were unable to process my reservation and that I would have to see an American Airlines representative to complete my booking. I knew right there that my day was about to take nose dive. I walked to the end of one line and stood there with all the other peoples, approximately 15 minutes of waiting, one of the reps approached and asked a bunch of us if we were on the flight to Chicago. When we all nodded yes, she informed us we were in the wrong line and moved us to a new longer line, and mentioned that the flight has been canceled. (FREAKIN AAAAAAGH)!!!!! That is the last thing I wanted to hear on a Friday when I was trying to get home. I did my time in that line (45 minutes) only to find out that I would be staying another night in New Orleans as the next available flight was Saturday morning at 11:00 am. So..back to the rental car place and the hotel I went for another night in New Orleans. All this time my wife was going completely stir crazy as she was snowed in and she was attempting to potty train my 2.5 year old. Saturday finally came and I was off to the airport again. I arrived and tried to check in again to my flight only to be told that they could not assign seats at that time (yep..I was having that feeling in my gut again). Luckily..I dodged the bullet and made the flight to Dallas where my connection was through.

The flight went fine and I arrived in Dallas only to find out that my connection was delayed by an hour and twenty minutes...oh the humanity. I passed the hour and twenty minutes watching Superman in my laptop so that wasn't bad. Finally the time had come to board the plane and my ticket showed I was in seat 24F in the ass of the plane by the window. I am not the thinnest guy as my shoulders are a bit wide so sitting in the window seat will and does prevent proper breathing. Everyone made it on board and was waiting to leave when the pilot came over the intercom and informed us that the bags from the last flight hadn't been unloaded yet. What the fuck did he mean the bags had not been unloaded yet...the damn plane had been on the ground for 40 minutes and these dumb shits hadn't unloaded the bags yet? What does it take for shit to go the right way as it should...I mean we are paying for a freakin service after all!!!!!! (Someone is testing my patience and I am failing miserably. I have the patience of Anakin Skywalker so I hope my son can save me from the dark side when it happens cuz I can guarantee it will or we will rule the galaxy as father and son, but I digress, let's return to the story). To top it all off the pilot is cracking jokes about the whole ordeal, keep in mind that my wife is going completely out of her mind at home and each of these delays is pushing her a little closer to the cliff. At this point I was ready to get off the plane, go down to the ramp and pull the bags off myself. We all know that if I had chose that course of action I would be blogging from a jail cell in Dallas. So I waited with all the other folks that were having the same thoughts I am sure. We did end up taking off (after a short 40 minutes had elapsed) and I did make it home a mere 26 hours after I was scheduled to be.

Oh the joys of air travel....later peoples...