The Garden of the Blind

I've finished my fourth week of travel out of the last 6. Only one more week before the start of my Travel Moratorium!

This trip started out with me and three coworkers chatting in the gate area waiting for our flight. We were having such a good time that we didn't notice that the plane should have taken off half an hour earlier. Apparently something was wrong with the plane. We heard boarding calls for many other flights (mostly to Denver, it turned out), and occasional announcements stating that they had no idea what was going on with our plane. Eventually, they told the international travelers to get in line to change their tickets (by this time, most of them had probably already missed their once-daily overseas connections). Three hours after we were supposed to start boarding, I got a call from home. Apparently, the airline had canceled the flight and changed my reservation for me and called me at home to tell me. This was thoughtful of them, although it would have been more thoughtful had they told us at the gate area that our flight had been canceled. They eventually did tell us, but by that time, we were on the phone with the travel agency. After several calls and repeated attempts to have airline employees talk to the baggage handler (who's walkie talkie wasn't working well), we got our bags and checked in with another airline.

The second airline bragged that their flight was on time. That's nice (and to their credit, the flight did arrive at the destination at its scheduled time), but five hours earlier, our original flight had been on time too.

This trip marked my second in two weeks where one of my coworkers made hotel reservations for everyone and then they fell through. I had made my own reservation and it was still good, but since they had caught the problem before we left, he had booked a block of rooms at another hotel. Again, I booked my own room and I think I had a better experience for it. It's hard to fault the guy for trying, but I'm determined to not ever use one of his reservations again. Let's see how long this lasts.

With all this excitement, this trip doesn't even get close to my worst trip in the last year. That would be my first trip to this place last May when we got robbed on the first day and beat up on the other days. This time, everything after we arrived went swimmingly.

At least until we checked into the airport and our flight was already delayed, two hours before it was supposed to start boarding. My coworkers wanted to bail on it right then, but we checked in anyway and the flight got moved up (and to another gate). Then they all sat on a bench a little ways away from the gate area and nearly missed it anyway. Fortunately, the flight was delayed again. Circle of life.