Has it really been a month?

Anyone still out there?

Well, those in the know already know about the three-day plane trip from Norfolk, VA. For those of you who haven't heard it yet, here's the epic prose.

Wednesday in Norfolk, I finished my work early. Yeah me! So, instead of kicking back on the government's dime and enjoying the good life on the beaches of Virginia I decided to come home a day early and get back to work. Silly me.

Thursday, my new and improved fly date home, I got to the airport with about three hours to spare... but, I didn't care too much because what else am I gonna do; it was already a 10 am flight, it's not like I was getting up early or anything. So, I get to the airport, drop my really sweet red mustang rental car off (very nice rental car!) and head into the mostly quiet airport. Checked in, through security, and to my gate in all of about 20 minutes. Went and had a cup of Joe; read a bit o' the paper, even. Headed over to my gate and sat down to tinker with my Play Station Portable whilst waiting for the flight.

Then there was the announcement that started it all: "there are storms in Chicago... we're going to be delayed leaving by 2 hours; flights departing from Chicago will be delayed 1 hour". Hmm... That doesn't quite work so well for me, seeing as I'll land when my connecting flight should be taking off. "Uh, excuse me. Miss. Excuse me. Um, yeah, I couldn't help but run through the math in my head and realize that I'm going to miss my flight... uh, what do I do?"

After many assurances that all flights were affected by these delays and that there wouldn't be any problem in getting to Seattle today, I returned to my ignorant bliss. Still, after about 3 hours I was getting a little... antsy. There was an earlier flight, come to find out, that was still delayed from 7am sitting right beside me. But, they were getting ready to leave and there were seats available. Okay, I’ll take one of those and get to Chicago where there will be plenty of flights to choose from, right? After another couple hours sitting on the runway in the plane we departed at 2pm; that's 7 hours after the flight I was on was scheduled to depart and about 4-1/2 hours after my original flight was supposed to depart. But we're in Chicago and all my problems are over. Right? RIGHT? Well, RIGHT?!?

Wrong.

I got the word that the new and improved flight that I was supposed to take to Seattle was going to be a bit delayed; they only had two airline hostesses and they needed four. Yeah, that's right, I called them hostesses; they serve drinks and tell me how to put tab A into slot B on a seatbelt that in reality if people can't figure out should be considered Darwin's way of thinning the herd. Well, we got our additional cocktail servers and we're just finishing the applause of this fortuitous news when we got word that union rules and FAA mandates forbid a pilot from flying over 10 hours and well, these pilots had been flying right here on the tarmac since 7am and it being 5pm and all, they get to go home. Not me mind you, because after a graceful 30 minutes of pretend searching, they cancelled my flight for lack of captains.

Oh captain my captain...

This isn't the sucky part, because I too have been in a situation where I've been cooling my heals all day long waiting for a job and after awhile you just have to say "hey look, you missed your chance, I'm going home" and that's that. No, the sucky part is that United Airlines had NO CONTINGENCIES. None. Not, "we're canceling your flight and you'll be shifted to the 7pm flight; not we're canceling your flight and giving you a hotel for the night; not we're canceling your flight but you'll fly first class on us some day soon with these handy vouchers. Uh huh. This was the, "why don't you try standing in the 4 hour long United Airlines customer service line that goes from terminal 2 all the way to terminal 1 and see what they can do for you" canceling the flight routine.

And if you're thinking to yourself that hey, Jason, you're flying on a government trip and they'll get you home, you'd almost be 100% right. But only if you stayed in a hotel overnight in Chicago, and only after learning that the quickest that United could get you home would be on Saturday morning (it still being Thursday, mind you) on an 8:15 am departure. In that situation, your travel department will buy you a $700 ticket to Houston Texas where you can sit around for four hours to catch a flight back across the longitudinals to Seattle just a hop, skip, and a continent away. Only the story doesn't get a quick ending like that, cause you'd first have to rip two toenails off your left foot on the funky door at the hotel in Chicago and you'd have to arrive in Houston with the intent of spending your four hour layover tooling around deep in the heart of Texas Gift Shops, only to find out that your pilots are still on a flight from LaGuardia and will be an extra two hours late.

I won't mention the Jaguar right next to our truck in the parking lot and the possible question of a bit too close of a parking job that put paint on the bumper of our truck. Cause it didn't happen. Honest... But we were holding our breath for a moment there.

I'm home. The toes are going to heal, and we spent a great weekend with friends and family down in Portland, Oregon.