San Diego to NC
Some of the workshop attendees complained about US Airways messing up their plans. One guy from Texas came a day late because of them. Now I have my own US Airways story.

The flight out of San Diego was delayed by maybe 45 minutes. I caught it OK, but it made things rather tight at my first connection in Las Vegas. I hurried over to the gate and discovered that it, too, was delayed. (In hindsight, I should have gotten something to eat then, even though I wasn't hungry.)

On the flight from Las Vegas to Philadelphia, I couldn't lean back in my seat. The flight attendant apologized and said she couldn't do anything about it, and gave me a set of headphones for free. The in-flight movie was Deja Vu, which looked interesting, so I was definitely mollified. Unfortunately, there was so much static on the headphones (as well as a second set) that I gave up trying to watch it.

When we got to Philly, we had to wait a while to get a gate assigned to us. Because of the late departure from Las Vegas, I was due to arrive in Philly when boarding for the flight to Raleigh began, so I was a bit anxious to begin with. But then we had to sit around for about an hour, waiting for a gate, so that I didn't even get off the plane until about 45 minutes after the Raleigh flight was originally due to depart.

Once off the plane, I hustled to an information screen, but my flight wasn't listed at all. I figured it must have already left. I asked the guy at the gate I came in on, but he said "I don't know anything, you'll have to get in line." The line he was referring to was so long I couldn't even see the front of it. It stretched down the hallway before turning a corner. Well, one of the guys also trying to get from Vegas to Raleigh, went hunting for information. He came back at a jog, saying "we gotta get to gate F33, and we gotta hurry!" So he, his wife, and I took off. We had to catch a shuttle at the other end of the C concourse to get to F. We followed the signs, and finally an escalator dumped us off in front of a set of sliding glass doors that would not open for us. Thankfully, there was a guy there to let us out, and we hopped on the shuttle bus to F, which departed pretty much as soon as we got on. At F, we ran to gate 33 and got on the plane, with only minutes to spare. The frustrating thing about all that was that, had that guy not gone out of his way to hunt a real person down, we would not have known about the flight from gate F33. Why didn't the information screen tell us about our flight? I hate to think about the people who weren't so lucky. I bet they had a hard time convincing the airline to give them a hotel to stay the night...

Well, I got in to Raleigh airport, and began waiting on my luggage. Jason was driving around outside, waiting to pick me up. It became apparent my luggage wasn't forthcoming, which really wasn't surprising to me, considering the mad dash in Philly. So I got in line for the baggage claim. I was about 20 people back, and after maybe a half hour of waiting, the line hadn't moved. If it was just me, I would have waited it out, but Jason was waiting on me. So I abandoned the line and went home.

Today, I went to pick up Russ from the airport, and got there an hour and a half early to hunt for my bag. I didn't find it. (There were at least a hundred bags on the ground there.) So I waited in line again. It was about the same length. I talked with some interesting people. One, Heather from Albany, NY, is a voiceover actor. She was in town to train people on voiceover acting. Interesting stuff.

Anyway, I finally get to talk to somebody, and they tell me that they can't put a claim in the database for me because it's been over 4 hours since my arrival. Have any of you ever heard of this rule? I wonder if it's just US Airways. The lady took my phone number down and said she'd call me if it turned up. I'm none too thrilled about it, but there's not much I can do, apparently. I'll try calling their general customer service line tomorrow. (I had done that today, but I got disconnected waiting for a representative. Others in line said they had the same experience.) Ah well, at least there were only dirty clothes in there. And my Bible. And my jacket. And my dress shoes and belt. And my books. And if you're wondering why I'm smelly/unkempt/unshaven, it's because my deoderant/comb/electric razor was in there too. :-/ Maybe this time I'll succeed in growing a scraggly beard. ;-)