F’ing Weather, Cabs, And Planes

It is only 10:30am and the day is not going well.

Joey is en-route to New Orleans. His flight was scheduled for 6:55, and being the good citizens we are, I called a cab firm last night and ordered a pick up at 4:30. Its about a 25 minute and $40 trip. This would give us the required 'being at the airport' 2 long hours before the stinking flight.

Of course the weather gods decided to intervene and we got a small dump of snow overnight. The consequences of this was that there was no cab at 4:30, there wasnÂ’t even one at 5:00. By this time Jan is becoming frantic. To make matters worse the stinking cab companies lines are all busy.

At about 5:45 we get a call from the aforementioned cab company suggesting that we might like to find alternative arrangements to get to the airport! I suggested that I might make alternative arrangements to get $300 from them to cover the non refundable ticket!

This changed their attitude a little, and by 6:30 we were at the airport.

Knowing full well that there was no way Joey was going to catch the flight we put a brave face on and prepared to do battle with United Airlines. The ticket guy could not have been nicer, he booked Joey on a 7:10 flight via Chicago, and the net result should have been a happy landing in New Orleans at 3:30pm, two hours later than originally planned, but life is good. Even better because of the weather situation no mention was made of the $40 fee to make a schedule change.

Because of needing to clear customs and make sure you are not carrying illicit tubes of toothpaste (3 oz max) they hustled Joey off to the dark world of immigration.

Jan by now is just a blubbering mess, she is crying so much the maintenance crews are following her around with a mop and bucket.

According to the Departure information the flight got off around 7:15, and much to the relief of the maintenance crew I dragged her out of the airport.

Being poor we took the bus-train-bus way home, so it was around 9:30 when I got my first beer. Of course in the big rush we did not remember to ask the flight details from Chicago to New Orleans. “no problem honey, 5 mins on the internet and I’ll have it figured out”. Oops, the DSL connection is not working!

It turns out that the DSL service in our part of town is experiencing some problems.

I just about have Jan calmed down when the phone rings, it is United Airlines (Automated System) informing us that there is a weather delay and that they have rebooked Joey on a new flight from Chicago leaving at 9:00pm!

Poor kid is going to have a real long day, he is now scheduled to arrive in New Orleans at 11:15pm.

Jan of course is a basket case because of all this.

More laterÂ…Â….