Why I dislike George Bush

Note: This post was written at various times between Friday, March 2, and Monday, March 5.

Dateline: March 2, 2007, Louisville airport
Why I dislike George Bush:
-Christian conservative
-Mispronounces words
-Sending a troop surge to Iraq
-Screws up our flight to Philadelphia

Our flight to Philly was scheduled to take off at 1:05, a good hour before Bush arrived in Louisville this afternoon. The plane came in late, and we boarded at 1:20. We pushed back from the gate and then sat for a while, then at about 1:45, we heard the engines shut down. The captain informed us that the airport was under a freeze for the next 20-25 minutes while the President arrived. So now we’re stuck on the plane, sitting on the tarmac, not moving. At least there’s airflow in the cabin, unlike that JetBlue fiasco a couple weeks ago.

I guess this is pretty much par for the course for me and my travels this week.

Dateline: March 5, 2007, Louisville apartment
I flew to Aspen last Saturday without a hitch, and my three days skiing and learning to be a better leader were great (in fact, I had a skiing breakthrough – my sense of fear is completely gone!). We were supposed to leave Wednesday morning, but by Tuesday night we realized there were going to be travel delays. In case you don’t know, the Aspen airport is nestled snugly in the mountains, with a tiny runway that can only handle tiny and slightly-less-tiny planes. The descent into Aspen is crazy – steep and narrow and very dependent on good weather conditions. It’s very common for flights from Denver to get to Aspen, miss their approach, circle for about 20 minutes, then return to Denver before their fuel supply runs out. If they had left Denver 15 minutes earlier or later, they would have missed the snow clouds over Aspen that appear randomly and fleetingly.

Anyway, some of the flights for our group were canceled by Tuesday night, but a lot of us were on a 9:45 am flight from Aspen to Denver, followed by legs to Chicago and Louisville. Two people on that flight had a baby back in Louisville they had to get back to, so they made plans Tuesday evening to rent a car (the only things left were a Yukon and a Hummer) to drive to Denver, where it would be easier to catch a plane. In order to make their scheduled Denver flight, they would need to leave before knowing whether the Aspen flight would be canceled, and if they showed up in Denver and the Aspen flight had not been canceled, United told them it would cost them $1300 each in fees to get on the plane in Denver that they ALREADY had reserved seats on. Ridiculous. Anyway, they, and one other person, left at around 3:30 in the morning on Wednesday to make the drive to Denver.

The rest of us woke up Wednesday morning unsure of our flight status. At 6:45 am I got a call from Orbitz saying it was going to be on time. At 7:10 I got another call saying the flight had been delayed 15 minutes. By 7:30 our flight had been canceled so I called the 1-800 United number to reschedule. There were six of us left at that point, three girls and three guys (not that that’s relevant, but so you can follow the rest of the story). The United lady offered me a seat on the 8:15 am flight direct to Chicago that had been delayed until 8:45. If I had finished packing super-quick and gone directly to the airport I could have made it, but I frankly just didn’t feel like it, so I and the two other girls got rebooked for the 9:45 am flight on Thursday instead. Then I passed the phone to the guys, who were all packed, and one of them took the 8:15/8:45 flight then found out he had gotten the last seat on it. All three of them went to the airport anyway; one to get on his plane and the other two to try to fly standby. Apparently they were told the plane was full, and the one guy eventually took off to Chicago a couple hours late. He later told us that in fact the plane was not full, but had 31 empty seats. Why wasn’t standby an option? We’ll never know. The two remaining guys took an airport shuttle/limo service to Denver for $110/person and got on a later flight, getting into Louisville late Wednesday night (the three people who rented the car got into Louisville at their originally scheduled time since they made the connection in Denver and had no fees since the Aspen flight was canceled; the guy who got on the 8:15/8:45 got into Chicago in time to make the last connection to Louisville, so he also got in on time).

So on Wednesday, the three of us girls, another guy, and another couple stayed in Aspen. Most of them skied, but I stayed in the lodge studying by the fire (nice!). We enjoyed a nice last day in Aspen, packed up our bags, and went out for the night to a bar where I was picked up by a very nasty and scary guy we think may have been on the Olympic snowboarding team in Torino (I haven’t bothered to Google him yet to try to find out):

Thursday morning we woke up, checked on our flight status, and went to the airport. We arrived a little before 9 for a 9:45 flight, and finally got to the counter to get checked in. I got checked in, but when it was time to print the tags to check my suitcase, the desk agent couldn’t access my reservation anymore. After some time we found out that our reservations were being worked on by United, because our final leg from Chicago to Louisville was being canceled in front of our eyes due to thunderstorms. There were no other flights from Chicago to Louisville because of the storms, so we were going to be stuck in Chicago. We decided that was fine, because we all knew people in Chicago, or we could rent a car and drive the five hours home. But before we could complete our reservation change, our flight from Aspen was canceled as well, because a small snow cloud had come through. They told us we would be able to get on the 10:45 flight out instead, but we didn’t like those chances, so we called the 1-800 number again. We had a lot of problems getting three tickets on any of the suggested itineraries, but we were finally able to get three seats on a flight from Vail to Denver to Cincinnati, and that was going to be the best we could do. So we rented a car and drove the 1.5 hours to Vail in just enough time to make it there before our flight. In snow, on curvy mountain roads. Yuck. We got there with perfect timing and boarded our flight to Denver, which went off without a hitch. It turns out that the Vail airport, while also situated in the mountains, has a little more room than the Aspen airport, so it has a larger runway and can accommodate larger planes.

We had a long layover in Denver, which wasn’t a big deal, until we got to the gate and found out that our flight to Cincinnati had also been delayed because the plane we were getting on was coming from – wait, you’re never going to guess – ASPEN! Aspen had ruined our plans again!

Well, we finally made it to Cincinnati at 11 pm Thursday, where someone else from the trip had flown into at 3 pm that day (on purpose), and had waited for us with his rental car to drive us all back to Louisville. (Note: that 10:45 am flight out of Aspen ended up leaving on time, so we could have gotten in and out of Denver a lot earlier than we did. Of course.) I got home at 1 am, went right to bed, then woke up at 6 to finish some homework due that morning. When I got to school, my professor very kindly expressed surprise at seeing me, and said he hadn’t expected us to show up at all because of our travel trouble. If only I had known that earlier, right? But I tried to do the right thing, so I get brownie points for that. I got back home at 11 am, threw all the ski clothes out of my suitcase, threw some new stuff in, and Eric and I went back to the airport to get on a 1 pm flight to Philadelphia for the weekend for a wedding.

Our plane was a few minutes late arriving and we were a few minutes late boarding, all of which added up to sitting on the tarmac waiting for the president to land I wrote of earlier. We ended up having a great weekend in Philly, saw lots of friends, and even got to the airport a little early on Sunday night before our 9:30 pm flight. We checked one suitcase, boarded the plane on time, and… sat at the gate. The pilot informed us that the airport was understaffed that day, so we didn’t have any staff to gate check our bags or push us off from the gate. We sat there for at least 30 minutes while the pilot apologized repeatedly but emphasized that it wasn’t his or the airline’s fault and there was nothing he could do about it. I think I have to write to the union to complain (as if I have time for that!). So we were late landing in Louisville and my whole week was capped off by our suitcase never showing up on the baggage carousel. So now it’s Monday night and I still don’t have my suitcase. It has clothes, my toiletries, and all of my medications. US Air has no idea where my bag is or when it will arrive. But I get on another flight this coming Friday to go to BWI, so it had better show up before then.

Can you believe it? I have never had any bad experiences flying, but I guess I got my quota all at once this week. At least, that had better be it, because I’m not sure I can take much more!