Tuesday, April 03, 2007

here we go again

So some of my more loyal readers may remember my spring break adventure from last year.

Good news, my friends: this year did not disappoint.

Since Prosecution is at the crack of dawn and T&E is a mind-sucking vortex, I got an early flight out of Madison to start the spring break revelry on Thursday afternoon. I should've known I was in for a real doozy of a trip this year when my laptop (which had been acting up lately) just stopped working on Thursday morning. (It stopped responding to the battery, so it just lost charge. Basically, this resulted in me not being able to watch stuff on the plane.) And, because it's spring, it was storming in Texas. (You know, big Texas-style storms.)

So when I got to the airport, this is how it went down:

11:38 - walk up to self-service ticket thingy.

11:39 - roll eyes at evil glare from other spring breaker using the other self-service ticket thingy. scan credit card.

11:41 - scan credit card again after first transaction canceled.

11:43 - flag down ticket counter lady. credit card scanner not working.

11:44 - somewhere, the theme to "The Office" starts playing. oh! that's my cell phone.

11:45 - Dangerous Dad tells me that my 4:45pm Dallas-Austin flight has already been canceled. (note the current time.)

11:47 - ticket counter lady issues me first-class tickets for the only open flights from Dallas-Austin remaining: one for an early flight (in case my Madison flight is early), and one if it's not.

11:48 - call back Dangerous Dad to tell him that I'll be in Texas tonight, and won't be stuck overnight in Dallas.

11:49 - triple-check with ticket counter lady that I can take cheese curds through security screening.

11:54 - still on cell phone. Hang up, then toss it into security bin with laptop.

11:55 - phone starts ringing while it's in the middle of the scanner. Yes, apparently I am that guy.


So the plane gets to Dallas about five minutes late. Fortunately, the early flight for which I was ticketed was delayed about an hour, so I had plenty of time to make the flight without sprinting the length of the Dallas airport. So we board the plane about 4:15...and then sit on the runway in Dallas for about 20 minutes because of "storms in Austin". When we finally take off, I see lightening bolts out the window (always a good sign). Then our hour-long flight takes longer because we have to go "around the storms" - namely, from Dallas to Austin via El Paso.

I get to Austin about 6:15 that night - only 20 minutes later than originally scheduled. As I'm explaining this to my parents and grandparents, they tell me that there were never any storms in Austin, so that couldn't be the reason for the extra delay. But at that point, it really didn't matter, because the evil magic powers of Howie do not hold a candle to the evil magic powers of Cliff, so I was able to make it to my destination that day (instead of being stuck overnight in Denver).

My luggage, on the other hand, was still ticketed for the canceled flight - consequently, it didn't arrive until 11:15 the next morning.

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