"I hope you realise this is Your Fault"

The passenger sitting next to me just picked up his mobile phone and had
the following conversation :

"Tom, I'm in still stuck in Boston, and it is all your fault"

"Well, apparently there are thunderstorms in Chicago, or storms near
Chicago. Or somewhere within 3000 miles of Chicago there is a
thunderstorm and, as you know, this has a tendency to cause
problems..."

Never fly at the last minute, The tickets are expensive and you can never
get the good routes. So I'm stuck here, where we've been sitting for the
for the last 3 hours, waiting for the rain to stop. All this because my
route takes me through Chicago.

Now, while this incident was just the usual a case of (a) me getting to the airport to find that all my flights had been delayed, (b) all the flights on alternate routes were booked out and, (c) I had to play the shell game of picking a flight that might actually leave tonight, You have to consider the bigger picture :
my last 3 days of travel were like this.

On my way to the east coast I was also routed through Chicago. Of my 3
nights away I have managed to spend 2 of them in Chicago airport hotels.

Simply trying to get out of San Jose turned out to be a problem when I
discovered that my airline has an inability to realise what 'special
assistance' means and decided to board the 2 wheel-chairs last. At a gate
that had no jet-way.

So we were entertained for the first few minutes as we watched a very
chipper young man crawl around on his knees and very slowly prepare his
wheelchair for flight. But after about 20 minutes, when he was finally cranked
up the stairs and we took off 45 minutes late most of us had lost our
sense of humour.

When the pilot got on the horn and explained that there were 'headwinds' it became abundantly clear that I was not going to make my connection - the last for the day. So we bombed into Chicago during in that terrible limbo period where I had about 20 minutes to get to my connection but had to endure the longest taxi ever and then discovered that my connection was at the furthest gate possible. Despite what anyone may tell you :

NEVER RUN FOR YOUR CONNECTION

You won't make it, you never will, the airline already gave up on you,
sold your seat and closed the doors way before you ever landed.

When I did finally reach the gate I had to wait for a pair of sweaty and
wheezing customers take great pains to explain to the agent how it was
"their fault" and the "airline was hopeless" and generally do everything
possible to try an make someone (who did not cause the delay) feel they
had to do something (which they could not do) to get them on a plane (that
had already left)

I merely showed the agent my worthless boarding pass, and he apologised
and gave me a free hotel room for the night. Sitting in the hotel bar
making phone calls I watched as the rest of the people on my flight slowly
trickled in.

So, Thinking that I'd done my time already, I really wasn't mentally prepared for the failures of the return journey.

We probably spent about 3 hours sitting at the gate, and another hour or
more at the end of the runway waiting for the green light to get the hell
out of dodge. Every time we seemed close the pilot would offer another
snippet of Chicago weather

"..Apparently that storm left the airport, but now it is in our fight
path.."

"...There is now a second storm at Chicago..."

"...Golf ball sized hail stones..."

I was wondering where they were getting all this useful information before
they opened the cockpit door and I saw one pilot showing another the
latest weather.com map on his TREO. Technology, gotta love it.

When we did finally land, 5 hours late, the airport was so closed there weren't even agents to even handle re-bookings. There was just a very tired manager at the customer service centre handing out a 1-800 number for hotels, knowing full well that everything was booked. I also realise, in hindsight, that she failed to mention that the arrivals area was in chaos and there was a 45 minute wait for a taxi.

I had spent so much time in transit I had killed the battery on my mobile, my iPod and most of my laptop, so I had to scrounge for change and a payphone to find a hotel. Luckily (thanks to a corporate travel 24 hour number) I found one and legged it over to the international terminal where the cab line was much shorter.

Sometime later (i think it was 2 am) I crashed in my hotel room, left a few voicemails for people and failed completely to charge either my laptop or my phone - it seems the power outlet was connected to the light switch.

As I write this I have less than 5% left.

Next time, I'm booking in advance and getting a direct flight.