Modern Transportation

Arrrgh!

I flew from San Diego (where I now live) to Chicago (where the adult-children still live) for the massive Easter Brunch that has become a tradition for us. When making my reservations several months ago, I went for the cheap and got a trip that had one lay-over each way in San Francisco. The outgoing leg was a red-eye from SFO to O'Hare.

Despite my efforts, I was not able to get any sleep on the flight out to San Francisco. When I got home, I just walked over to my bed and crashed. No biggie.

The rest of the day was a hazy blur, but it ended with me visiting my ex-door neighbors and playing cards till midnight.

Sunday came and I gathered everyone up to go to the brunch. We sat and ate for two and a half hours. Man, was it good! I then talked my youngest into driving me back to the airport on her way home. I also scrambled to get her taxes done (which meant filling out a 1040X for re-filing taxes. Then off we went to the airport.

Well, the weather was a factor at O'Hare. Many planes (including mine) were late getting in, so I was very worried that I would not make my flight from San Francisco to San Diego. And, that was the last flight out from SF. I asked about the non-stop from O'Hare to SD and found out that it was over-filled because the previous non-stop was cancelled.

Undaunted, I waited patiently to see what would happen. My aircraft did arrive and they turned the plane around very quickly. We were told, however, once we pushed away from the gate, that due to head winds and weather, it would take us longer to get to Frisco than the schedule indicated. Of course that meant I would miss my connection.

After we took off, the pilot informed us that they had found a 'short cut' to SF and we should arrive as early as 10PM. That gave me twenty minutes to make my next flight. Cool.

The bad part was that it got very bumpy after takeoff, what with all the weather. So, I tried to snuggle down and get some sleep. No good.

The movie was 'Narnia'. Unfortunately, that got my attention and I watched the whole thing. (Pretty good, actually.) So now with only 90 minutes of the flight left, I closed my eyes and tried to get a short nap. Oh, lucky me, more bumps!

As we landed in San Francisco, my watch said it was just after 10. By the time we de-boarded and I rushed to the gate (of course it was in a different wing of the terminal) I had a reasonable chance of catching my flight. So, off I gallop.

The good news was that my flight was still on the monitors and had not departed. The bad news was that it was delayed because of aircraft issues. So I got to sit and wait until they found and delivered another aircraft.

I finally got home about 1:30 this morning. To say I was tired is an understatement. I slept through most of my alarm this morning and I rolled into work about 9:30. All the sugar and massive qualities of food finally caught up with me.

I got your message when I landed in San Diego along with an auto-message from Untied Airlines, saying that my flight was cancelled and I was "scheduled to depart from Frisco to San Diego at 6AM on Monday".

So, that is my Saga-de-jour. If this story seems dis-jointed and poorly written it's because I still haven't regained full conscienceness yet. (Excuse me while I clean the drool from my keybiard.)