I’m sitting in the Austin Airport, some 12 hours after arriving here with Doug this morning. I figured a two hour layover before my flight wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, even with the lack of sleep from the night before (something like 2 or 3 hours max).  After taking off around 9am for the 35 minute flight to Dallas, we spent an hour and a half circling DFW due to weather related landing restrictions. In the end, we burned 2.5 hours in the sky and had to return to Austin.  OK...maybe things could get better, right? Nope, not at all. We ended up waiting in line for an hour to just get info on our connection status, and not even the 1-800 numbers could get us in touch with American Airlines personnel (that should have been my first sign of  a problem).

 

Another hour passes, and the word starts to filter down: all flights out of Dallas are cancelled due to severe weather. Oh fucking joy. I learn this just an hour of my scheduled ‘return’ time to Philly. So, the zombies of flight 1743 saunter on down to the main ticket line in order to rebook, only to find a half mile long line of similar souls. Yup, the day was only getting brighter and brighter.

 

So, after an almost two hour wait in line (and some great conversations with other misplaced travelers) I get booked on a flight on a different airline to Newark, NJ, followed by an ride Amtrak.  The hope is that I’ll be able to sleep in my own bed tonight...the key word is ‘hope’.  Im still in the airport waiting for the flight, so we’ll just cross our fingers and see. Or, I’ll go completely apeshit. Either way, we all win.