I left my Twitter friends hanging last night. If you follow me on Twitter, you’ll know that my travel luck has been…poor…lately. Ever since February, when Delta lost my bags twice in two weeks, things have gone crazy when I try to travel. This past trip, on my way to Cincinnati, my flight was canceled, they were going to keep me in the airport for ten hours before the next flight (after generously giving me a FIVE DOLLAR meal voucher) so I opted for rerouting to Dayton. But not before running into my ex-husband in an airport in a city in which neither of us live. Travel karma, I haz it.
So on the way back, I was bemoaning that I was once again facing bad travel mojo, as my flight was delayed an hour and a half (and once again US Airways wouldn’t let me on an earlier flight due to checked luggage. I HATE that policy), putting me home at midnight. I was grateful the flight wasn’t canceled (since it was the last flight out of the day) and thought that once I boarded, my travel woes were done. Not so.
The flight from Philadelphia to my town is not a long one, maybe 40 minutes. It was late at night, I was tired and a little irritable and so I didn’t appreciate it when the flight attendant spent the entire flight standing in the aisle talking to the woman in front of me. In fact, she spent so long talking to her that she did none of the final landing announcements (turn off portable electronics, put your seat backs and tray tables up, make sure your seatbelts are fastened) and didn’t take her seat until we were almost touching down. Ergh. So I was mildly irritated by that, but having her stand there did put m in the unique position of seeing the absolute panic on her face when a large thump sounded on our side of the plane. And then hear her say “what was that?” before she hurried to the front to call the pilots. I know, reassuring, right?
Turns out we hit a bird. Thankfully, it didn’t get into one of the engines, but it still scared the hell out of the flight attendant and a few of the passengers.
So as I’m sitting on the plane, I’m just thankful my bad travel mojo hasn’t resulted in death for anything but the poor bird. And as we land, I’m glad for the end of my travel adventures. Ahahahaha…how wrong I was.
Since we landed so late (not quite midnight) I called a taxi to come and get me rather than having Josh drag Brianna out of bed. I called from the plane to expedite the process, and only had to wait a few minutes after I got my luggage for the taxi to arrive. Well, it turns out another man had also called a taxi, so the driver decided to take both of us. Fine with me. Of course, as we’re leaving the airport, we see another taxi–from another company–coming our way. Um, yeah, turns out that guy had gotten into my taxi. He’d called a different company. No big deal, the town isn’t that big, we’ll deliver him to his hotel, The Country Inn and Suites, and I’ll get home within minutes. Riiiight. The taxi driver starts telling us a story of one of the drivers being mugged just minutes earlier, and then was telling me another was shot at several nights before. We talk about the crime in town for about 15 minutes while driving to…The Comfort Inn. When we pull up, I mention that the gentleman is staying at the Country Inn and Suites and off we go again, the taxi driver saying “oh okay, of course, I know where that is…” as he takes us ten minutes later…to the Marriott Residence Inn. At this point, I’m pulling out my iPhone to get the address (because I really don’t remember ever seeing the Country Inn and Suites so I can’t recall where it’s at) and the driver calls the hotel. Turns out the hotel is actually pretty close to where we started at the airport. So our third stop is, thank God, the actual Country Inn and Suites. We took that poor man on a tour of the area that he didn’t need to see–and he had to be up for meetings in five hours.
By this time, I’ve been traveling around with the taxi driver for almost 45 minutes, and am just giggling to myself because 1) my husband is asleep and if that driver had decided to drive me to Baltimore, I’m not sure he’d have noticed until morning and 2) I think the driver (Tony) was kind of glad for the company because he talked my ear off. and 3) at one point he’d pulled out a taser stick and demo’d it for me and the other passenger, and then told us of the gun he carried under his seat (we were talking about how dangerous it was to be a taxi driver). Is it weird that I wasn’t nervous about this adventure at all? At the end of it all, he got me home, yes he did charge me full fare for a trip from the airport (there’s no meter, it’s a flat fee) and he gave me his card so I could ask for him by name next time I needed a taxi. And you know what? I probably will. Because I’m crazy like that.
So, who wants to travel with me?
That’s the kind of luck I have when I travel. And in life in general.
Maybe if two cursed travelers travel together, good things happen. Two negatives equal a positive. Maybe?
Ok, probably not.
Ummm, yeah, I think I’ll pass on traveling with you… but glad you made it home safe
I take back last night’s last tweet: You would have been better off sitting in CVG.
No freakin’ way!! How can all of that happen to one person?!
I’m sorry it happened to you but I still can’t stop laughing
Really, you do need to compare travel disasters with Carly Phillips. It would be highly amusing.
I’m afraid to travel with you.
yep still laughing – i organise travel for an engineering consulting firm and i can get staff from Australia to Afghanistan with less adventure than you in the good old USA.
Though i must say with our staff working in many countries ending in ‘stan (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kazikstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan etc) i don’t really want them to have adventures
Glad you made it home safe
One simple post reminds me of all the reasons I don’t like travel. Hope your bad travel karma is over now and your trip to RWA will be a breeze.
Wow, my sympathies! Nice to know someone has worse luck than me though, lol.
Of course 9 out of 10 flights I get pulled out of the line and patted down in front of the other passengers (and trust me, because this happens with such regularity I follow all the luggage regulations to a “t” but it still doesn’t help). Apparently I’m quite scary looking.
Mortifying!
My biggest issue for air travel are the medical devices I have implanted. They always set off the detectors so I always get a pat down. I started dressing in gym shorts, beach tees and sandals when ever I fly. One day, I gave my wife all of my stuff, including my wallet, and went over for a pat down. They asked me for my ID and I told them my wife had it. I pointed to her (she had already passed through the detectors and but the entrance to the boarding area. The security guard walked over to her and pointed me out. She had an evil grin on her face and I could read her lips as she told the guy “I’ve never seen that guy before in my life.” The guard motioned to his partner to bring me over. He wasn’t real gentle about it either! When we got there, my wife told them she was only joking.
I actually stopped flying shortly thereafter. Now I take either drive or take the train everywhere I go. When we moved form Connecticut to Texas, we came by train. It’s a lot of fun!
You and Marc apparently are having the same travel mojo right now.
In future if you have a late arrival like that again, call me, it takes me 5 mins to get to the airport, you can crash here.