Joe,
At the start of your rant (sorry, vent), it sounded like a Bugs Bunny cartoon.
As in "I knew I should have made that left at Albequerque". And, of course, then flying into O' "HARE" (hare as in rabbit)...
However, I realized it wasn't a Looney Toon when you didn't end up in Pismo Beach.
<vbg>
Seriously, Joe, sounds like the trip from hell. Or, to hell and back. My commiserations.
cheers, frank
"The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true." -J. Robert Oppenheimer
From: Joseph Tainter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: pdml <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Re (Now a long OT vent)
Date: Sat, 26 Jun 2004 19:55:27 -0600
Shaun inquired:
---------
Sounds like there'a a yarn here Joe! What happened?
Cheers
Shaun
> I am in Washington, DC, after my worst travel day in 14 years. I need to gripe to someone.
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Okay, blame Shaun for the following:
Monday morning I check in at American Airlines in Albuquerque to fly to Washington, DC, connecting through Chicago-O'Hare. All the employees are grumpy. I suspect they have just gotten some bad news.
My Albuquerque to Chicago plane is broken. We depart an hour late.
Arriving in Chicago, it is raining heavily. For those of you not in the U.S., Chicago is such a major hub that bad weather there virtually cripples the economy, not to mention airline schedules. Anyway, I head to my next gate, still in plenty of time. Trouble is, there is a broken plane stuck at that gate. It's not the one I am supposed to take. My plane can't get to its gate. After about 1/2 hour we are directed to another gate in another terminal. We sit and sit and no plane arrives. Meanwhile, the plane at the next gate breaks. All those people have to go somewhere else. That, at least, frees up some seats. After about 90 minutes one of the American Airlines people says that our plane has landed and is somewhere on the field, but no one can find it. Eventually it found us. We finally depart O'Hare three hours late, and get into DC proportionately delayed.
Okay, I know something about probability. More than just "something" in fact. Three broken American Airlines planes in one day is more than just coincidence. Is American cutting back on maintenance? I recall the stories about ValuJet skimping on maintenance just before one of their planes went into the Everglades. In fact, I recall this as I am boarding the plane.
Tuesday and Wednesday are uneventful. On Thursday my meeting finishes in time for me to grab the *ist D and head over to take some photos of the new World War II Memorial for my father (who was in the Pacific). That goes well, then I walk all the way down to the Korean War Memorial (the one on the stunning postage stamp), then all the way over to the Jefferson Memorial. There are no metro stops near the Jefferson, so I hike back to the Smithsonian metro stop. Along the way I pass the Haitian exhibits at the Folklife Festival.
Buying my metro ticket, I proceed to the escalator, but it is blocked off. It is blocked because the platform below is so crowded that people are almost falling onto the track. The Metro Blue Line is broken. A fire broke out on one of the trains. I know the Metro well enough that I realized I could take the Blue Line in the opposite direction, go one stop, transfer to the Yellow Line, and get to my hotel on the other side of the Potomac. So off I go -- only to wait 1/2 hour for a train to arrive. I am pretty tuckered out by the walk in humidity levels that I am not used to and don't like. Finally a train arrives and everyone piles on. It is very, very crowded. We are jammed together. The train proceeds, then halts halfway to the next stop. The driver says we have to wait for trains to be switched -- the Blue Line is down to one track. It is rush hour, hot, humid, and everyone is packed onto this train. I try not to get claustrophobic. I try not to think about anything else going wrong in this black tunnel. Next to me a junkie (needle marks in his elbow) sinks to the floor, gets up, then is confused. Finally, after about 20 minutes, we proceed to the next stop. My journey through 4 Metro stops takes 1-1/2 hours.
It is Friday. Today I will get back to sunny, dry, and much-less-crowded New Mexico. I check into American Airlines again, with some trepidation because my connection is through Dallas-Fort Worth. I have long called this airport "The Bermuda Triangle of connecting flights." Sure enough, about an hour into the flight the pilot tells us there are storms around Dallas and we might get diverted. The whole planeload collectively groans. Fortunately (or unfortunately) we can land at Dallas and do. Then we proceed to spend 90 minutes on the tarmac because there are no open gates at this enormous airport. Good thing I always carry books. Finally we pull into a gate. I find that I did not miss my connecting flight. It, too, was delayed. So about two hours late we take off and manage to land at Albquerque. Meanwhile, my poor wife has been circling Albuququerque Airport waiting for me. She doesn't want to park because she has bad knees, and it is a good walk to the terminal. My plane pulls up toward our gate but stops short of it. We wait for 20 minutes. Why? Because American Airlines has another broken plane stuck at our gate! Finally they push it back and we can get off the plane.
Then, naturally, my bag doesn't arrive. It is still in Dallas, although there was plenty of time to transfer it. This is twice in a row that American has done this to me at DFW. Last September, as I went to Oslo, my bag went to Zurich.
Today, at noon, my bag is delivered and this nightmare is finally over.
Wow, that feels better.
Joe
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