techno.blog("Dion")

I am notorious for having bad travel experiences. I had a fun day of travel from Columbus, back home last weekend that gets added to the list.

It didn’t start out well when the AC stopped working in the cab that I was taking to the airport. Since it was in the high 80s, it didn’t take long to get uncomfortable, but I grinned and bared it. Unfortunately, I wasn’t the only thing to get overheated, as while on the freeway, I started to see smoke coming out of the engine. We had to pull over, as the car was broken down. I stood there, feeling like I was at the Indy 500 as cars whizzed by on both sides. I had to call the wife just to laugh about it. A mere 30 minutes later, and another cab found us… and I was on my way to the airport.

I didn’t miss my flight or anything. In fact, I could have been stuck on the freeway for another few hours and been fine. The reason is that my flight was constantly delayed. Was it due to weather? no. Waiting for a plane? no. Mechanical issue with the plane? no.

The problem was that a jetway was broken, and “the guy who can fix it can’t be reached on his cell phone”. Great. The Guy.

There were several open jetways next to us, but NWA couldn’t use those for some bizarre reason. I felt bad for the plane that was sitting on the runway and couldn’t deboard.

I started to feel more and more sorry for myself, as I realised how myself, and those around me, were all sweating. You got it. The AC was broken in this wing of the airport. People couldn’t move to where it was OK, as we were constantly on and off wrt the jetway.

My saviour was getting a Dove ice cream bar to keep me cool. This helped a little, until we finally got on the plane.

I sat next to an east coast couple, where the wife was trying to keep her husband positive about making their connection. We quickly learned that they would be screwed, as we sat on the runway itself for an hour. This time it was due to the airport that I was connecting through had lost power.

When I finally landed, I got lucky again in that my connecting flight was delayed also. I felt very lucky when I jumped on the last flight running that night, at 12:30am, and shot the hell home.