My Adventures Part Deux

Hopefully I will finish the story in this installment... otherwise I will have to figure out what comes after deux... troi? I don't know...

So the rest of work went off without too many hitches, other than the fact that right before we left, we toasted a circuit card on a valve, but no biggie, we can replace it later. I hop in the car and head to the aiport. I get all checked in for my flight and get through security, then realize my flight is delayed over an hour. it was still going to be possible that I will make my scheduled flight to philly, but just in case the guy set me up with standby on the next flight to philly. When I was standing in line there was an older woman, something like 70's or 80's and I think she was doing everything she could do not to stab the gate agent. She kept doing this very uncomfortable "I am going to kill someone soon if I don't hear what I want soon" laugh and looking around at any one that was listening. I was half-hoping that the flight would be cancelled just so I could see an 80 year old woman stab a 25 year old man. comedy gold...

The flight ended up being delayed another hour so it left about two hours late... after we land i turn on my cell phone and it is 9:31... and the last flight to philly leaves at 9:40. So I am thinking I have 9 minutes to bolt to the next plane which happens to be in a whole different terminal. nice. but luck was not with me on this day because we ended up sitting on the runway for about 10 minutes before we got to the gate. so I get off the plane, look at the monitors, and the last flight to philly shows that it has departed. so I pull a charlie brown shoulder slouch and still head to the gate where I was supposed to catch the plane with hope of some freak accident of the monitor being wrong. I get there show them my ticket and they say no joke, "Here's our DiBona!!" I thought that was pretty humorous. So the gate agent tries to put me on the flight to philly in the morning, but all of the flights are full so she would have to put me on standby and then I could possibly be stuck in the atlanta airport for the whole day. but she proposes another idea...

I could fly into newark that night, and figure out a way to get to philly. either by train or car. my bags would still get to philly the next day, but I would at least get home tonight. so I say, what the hell, and she put me on standby for the flight. So I am the last person that makes it on the flight via standby so I figure my luck has finally turned for the better. After an APU issue, apparently this plane didn't have one, we got off the ground and we were on our way to newark. I get to the newark airport a little after midnight and I make what proves to be a very bad decision by not checking for my baggage in newark. I figured the gate agent would have known whether or not my bags would have been sent there or to philly, but apparently she didn't. So apparently, according to the delta folks, my bag is sitting somewhere in the newark airport. They put in a request to have it forwarded to philly about 30 hours ago, but absolutely nothing has happened since then. No wonder all the airlines are running in the red, they have no clue how to do anything correctly. I am pretty sure I could find a route for those bags in about 10 minutes using orbitz (its called send it back to atlanta and then on to philly... they have flights every hour). ohh well... nothing important was in there other than my toiletries and my running shoes, which were wet at the time of packing, so they might be all moldy and ruined by the time I get them.

So after this mistake, I went to national and rented a car. basically i paid the money for the rental, and then you walk out to the parking garage and then steal whatever car you want cuz they leave the keys in the car and they aren't assigned to anybody. it was pretty strange. I ended up paying for a mid-size and got a full-size cuz I didn't know what the difference was. ohh well. so I make the two hour trip to philly without any hitches. ohh by the way... the rain that we got in mobile thursday and friday... was the same rain I had to drive through to get home. all told, i ate 9 servings of pretzel and cheese combos and ended up getting home around 3:30ish in the AM.

anyway... i ran 5 miles today despite having a bit of hangover and I felt so much better after doing it. after abusing my body the last couple days, I finally did something nice for myself and it felt great. I really need to start getting back in the groove with my running. Before the half marathon, I was really cruising, but things have really slowed down... maybe this week will get me back on track (my goal is more than 25 miles, 20% of the way there already!!).