Even more travel

Okay, more travel. Got up super early (like 4:45 am early) to leave for the airport at 6:15-ish. After getting stuck behind someone who insisted on going exactly 55 and then some truck leaking what I hope was water, a colleague and I made it the airport... only to find out the place I usually park was full and they wouldn't let me park there (as they had in the past when it was full). So, off to airport parking. I had to drop off my colleague because her flight left before mine and I found a parking spot in a lot that felt like it was ten miles from the terminal.

All else was uneventful until I got to Charlotte. After a two hour layover my flight was delayed an hour. And then another hour--due to traffic congestion. The agent announced that there was too much traffic going to our destination so the FAA said they had to wait.

......And then the storms moved in. Not big, huge storms, but there was enough that the airport shut down all ramps due to lightning. So we waited. And other passengers on planes sat on the tarmac, fifteen feet from the ramp, unable to unload. A woman at my gate said they sat on the tarmac for an hour before they were allowed to get off the plane. I think we were shut down for thirty minutes. And then my flight was canceled. Weather, the agent told me. All the delays were weather. (I asked him why he told us it was traffic congestion; he said he never did. Whatever.) From what our new gate agent is saying, the canceled flights this afternoon to alleviate the big cluster-fuck that was going to occur when all the flights that had been waiting to leave, could leave.

While the gates were pulled, this guy announced they would be closed for a minimum of 30 minutes and that everyone waiting for a flight in the area should be back in 20 minutes. Several left. Then less than ten minutes later, the opened the gates and the flights left. And then the people came back and found their flights had left--even though they came back exactly twenty minutes later. I'da been pissed.

So anyway... they put us on another flight that looks like it should get there--if the plane ever actually gets here. Because it's at least 45 minutes late. I also hope my luggage gets there. Everyone swears to all of us that it will. I sure as hell hope so. If it doesn't I'll be giving a presentation in a pair of jean a t-shirt I spilled sour cream on.

So far, things that I have seen: a biker dude in a psuedo-Mexican restaurant with a really big, bumpy, funny looking nose. He was at the table next to me. We chatted while I ate come crappy nachos and drank an overpriced, incredibly potent margarita. A woman so blond (with her hair pulled back) that I thought she was bald.

And right now some woman is giving out her credit card number and expiration date on her cell phone--for the second time.

And now some biker-looking chick with bulging eyes and a turtle-like neck is talking up some bike-looking dude. Bikers in Love.

So, hopefully, I will arrive at my final destination--five hours late.