The Gods of Travel Hate Me

I'm back! Who missed me? Come on, don't be shy. There must be someone.

Anyway, so California is a nice place, I've decided. Well, at least the very small part of it that I got to see is nice. The weather was just about perfect. I took a bunch of pictures of palm trees because, let's face it, Indiana girls like me just don't get to see palm trees that often. I wish I had gotten to do more touristy type stuff, but I was there to work not play. Although the last evening I was there, I did take a shuttle to Downtown Disney to do a little shopping. And I had dinner at a Rainforest Cafe. I've always wanted to eat in one of those, but never had gotten around to it. I sat through 2 thunderstorms and a bunch of monkey noise, and have decided that that place is kick-awesome.

I did have a rather bad experience on the way home from California that I would like to share. I got to LAX about an hour and a half before my plane was supposed to leave. Once I got to the gate, I noticed a bunch of people standing in a line at the counter. Why? Because they had overbooked the flight and decided to change planes. So, we all (and when I say all, I mean all 200 of us) had to stand in line to get our new boarding passes with different seat assignments. But, amazingly enough, they got us all boarded only a little behind schedule. So we start to taxi, and then we stop. And we don't move for like, 10 minutes. And then we hear the captain start to say something about the auxillary power valve not shutting like it's supposed to, and how we're going to have to go back to the gate so the mechanics can manually close it. Then we start taxiing back to the gate when we stop again. The problem had fixed itself! We finally took off, about an hour later than we were supposed to. To make this part of the story shorter, I'll just say that we landed at O'Hare at 3:30pm, and my connecting flight left at 3:45pm. After making a mad dash through the airport, I found that my plane had not taken off, but the doors were closed and I was not allowed to board. They also couldn't get me on another plane until 9:35pm. Grrr. I called my husband, who told me about a shuttle that left at 5:15pm that would get me home by 8:00pm. So, I paid $33.00 and got on the shuttle. Well, wouldn't you know it, right about at the Illinois/Indiana state line, a truck lost a load of steel all over the highway. So the busdriver took us to our stops via the city streets. I finally got home at about 9:30pm - 5 minutes before my flight would have left! So at least I didn't get on the shuttle for nothing. All I know is, I've had it with airports for a while. And shuttles. I'm just driving myself everywhere I need to go from now on. And maybe I'll get a pilot's license too. Hmm...

Anyway, that's enough rambling for now. Everybody enjoy the rest of the week! I'll try to do the same, although it's very hard to be back at work after a week away. At least I only have to get through next week and then...vacation! I can't wait.