Something about the Midwest

What is it about Indiana and Illinois that mean we often have crazy trips??

This time, we managed to remember that the family lives very near the Central/Eastern timezone border.   However, this time we nearly had a repeat of the disastrous Illinois trip from summer 2010.  The problem began when, for some reason, our layover in Atlanta became short.  The flight from KC was on time - despite leaving late - so we thought we had enough time to get from our arrival gate to our departure gate and even have time for a pit stop and a brief break.  We thought wrong.  After making said pit stop, we walk to our gate, only to find that they are no longer 'boarding' - they've 'boarded'.  We were the last two on the plane, and there was still 20 minutes until our scheduled departure time!  Moments after we took our seats, the plane pushed back from the gate.  We then proceeded to sit on the tarmac for about 30 minutes while we waited for clearance to take off.  We arrived in Evansville on time, but quite jostled from flying over the tornado storm system.  I went to get our rental car (which ended up being a brand new 300 with 103 miles!!), while my colleague waited for the suitcase.  And waited.  And waited. Yep, you guessed it.  Delta had made our layover so short that they couldn't get the suitcase from one plane to the other before we left.  Uh oh.  My colleague and I made the necessary arrangements to have the bag brought to our hotel after it arrived on the next available flight.  Well, that flight got delayed 2 hours because of the tornado storm system. Rather than stay up past midnight, we asked the front desk to call us once the bag made it.  When the call finally came at 1:30am, we didn't care what time it was, we were just glad the flight hadn't been canceled!  The next morning, we retrieved the suitcase and the rest of the trip went off without a hitch.