Brought To You By The Letters: WTF, FUBAR, and SNAFU

Talk about a trip from hell. Like a good American citizen, I arrived at the airport around 9:20 AM to give myself more than an hour for security checks. Of course they picked me to be pulled over to the side and I was wanded, patted, and swiped for explosives and weapons. And no, I didn’t beep when I went through the metal detector.

My plane landed on time and unloaded all of the passengers. Just as I was getting ready to board the plane, it developed a small technical problem. It was supposed to take just 15 – 20 minutes to fix. Yeah, that estimate grew to 60 minutes, then six hours, and then the plane just exploded all over the runway. Well, not so much the explosion part.

Delta then decided to fly another plane down to Tallahassee to pick all of us up. Just keep in mind that just about every one on the plane had a connecting flight in Atlanta and over half had already missed it. Not me. I was doing a-ok…until the relief plane was late. So yeah, I missed my connecting flight to Houston but Delta was kind and rescheduled me to a 5 PM flight.

I should also mention that I had to leave the boarding/terminal area, go back to the ticket desk, and get all my flights rescheduled. That meant I had to go through security again. And guess what…I got pulled off to the side AGAIN!! Wash, rinse, and repeat.

Needless to say, I finally flew to Atlanta and arrived three hours late.

After killing an hour, I begin to board my plane. I started to walk down the gate thing and realized there wasn’t a gate thing. Just steps down the tarmac. Yeah. I’m standing out on the ground in the middle of the ATL Airport. After mild hearing loss, I boarded the plane and took off. About 10 minutes into the flight the captain came over the intercom and said, “Good evening ladies and gentlemen. You may have noticed a slight noise ever since we took off. Our landing gear is stuck in the down position and we have to turn back to Atlanta to get it checked out.

Long story short…we landed and they kicked us off the plane. Back on the ground, up the stairs, and into the terminal.

Again, Delta had to go and get a spare plane for us. So we loaded up again (via the tarmac) and started to taxi out to the runway. And stopped. We sat there for about 20 minutes when the captain announced there was a mechanical problem and we were going to pull back up to the gate and have maintenance look at it. Thankfully they were able to fix the problem and we began to taxi out again.

Where we stopped.

Apparently the tug car that carries the plane out of the runway died and we had to wait for another one. In that process the plane broke again. They pulled the plane back up to the terminal, dumped us on the ground, and canceled the flight.

I had to run down to the Delta desk and try to make other arraignments to get to Houston before my 8 AM meeting. They managed to book me on the last flight to Houston at 9:55 PM…just to a different airport. Thankfully there were three other Engelhard employees on the plane with me so getting a ride wouldn’t be a problem.

After all that I finally got to Houston at 1:20 PM EST. I made my way through the airport to the baggage claim area. I think you can safely guess what happened next.

No luggage.

But they also managed to lose about 10 other people’s luggage from the same canceled flight as well. If all goes well I should have my luggage around noon Wednesday. Guess who gets to go shopping before the meeting?

In summary, I had two flights and five different planes. I arrived at the hotel at about 2 AM, just about 10 hours late. All three of my meals were at the airport. I was beginning to feel like the guy on the Terminal.

PS – There was a security guard in the elevator with us as we rode up to our rooms. He asked us what room numbers we had. Yeah, he looked at me and said, “You’ve got the longest to walk.”

Cherry on my ice cream.

Creatively Decorated Nerdy Cakes

Turret Defense.

Imbecile with face painted to resemble Darth Maul arrested for waving fake Glock outside Oregon school. The Smoking Gun is there with hilarious mug shot goodness.

Make your own For Dummies book cover generator.

Orangutwang.

Bad: You let your seven-year-old son handle your loaded handgun. Worse: You’re a cop. Worser: He fires off a round inside the police station.