Flying Home

I guess my travel woes aren't limited to work trips.  I took my boyfriend home with me for Christmas this year, and we decided to fly instead of making the 10-hour drive.  The good news was that I had a $400 credit on United for getting bumped last November, so I was able to get us great tickets without paying an arm and a leg.  All went well on the trip to Nashville last week, but the trip home became somewhat of an adventure.  We were supposed to fly back to Lawrence yesterday on a 6:10pm flight.  At about 3:30, I checked my email one last time and discovered that United had cancelled our flight. Uh-oh.  Apparently there was bad weather in Chicago so they were delaying all the flights headed that way.  Since our flight didn't have many people on it, they just outright canceled it.  We discovered that United had put us on a noon flight today that was to go through Cleveland.  Unfortunately, that particular flight sequence included a 4-hour layover in Cleveland.  Lovely.  I looked at United's available flights and discovered one that was scheduled to leave Nashville at 5:05pm yesterday, going through Charlotte.  We sped over to the airport to try to make that flight, but the odds were against us.  We arrived right at 4pm, but proceeded to stand in line until 4:20pm.  Clearly, there was no way we'd make that flight.  So, we just got our boarding passes printed and went back outside.  Thankfully, Mom and Dad were willing to wait for us just in case we didn't make it.  So, we got an unexpected extra night in Nashville, which I thoroughly enjoyed.  I was able to call the pet sitter to make sure the bunnies were taken care of, so that worked out.  Now, here I sit in the Cleveland airport in our 4-hour layover.  I'll admit, it's not that bad of a place to be stuck, and they have free Wifi, which is always a plus.  I have two trips scheduled for work in January.  Hopefully the weather won't continue to be a problem!

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. 

Business Trip #2

Had a whirlwind business trip to Rochester, NY, on Friday and Saturday.  We landed in the Rochester airport Friday afternoon, and then flew out again less than 24 hours later.  The assessment went well, and the flights were smooth, despite a 3-hour layover in Chicago.  I ate in an airport restaurant for the 1st and 2nd times!  Been pretty tired today, but glad I can chill out with football.

I'm finally getting sick for the first time this season, and it seems that I'm skipping the cold stage and going straight to bronchitis.  I've got too much going on in the next 6 weeks to get sick!