code-chick.net

the trip here…

let me start off by saying that i doubt you’ll believe this, but i swear it really happened. i have 17 other witnesses as well…

ok, so i was at the airport at 5:45am. checked in. went to the gate. plane was scheduled to take off at 7:10, so far, so good, right? not quite.

at 6:50 (at what time we were all wondering when boarding was going to start), the pilot came off the plane and made a PA announcement along the lines of this: “i don’t know if you’ve been updated, but here’s what happened. the plane had a water leak on the inside and it dumped a few inches of water everywhere in the cockpit. technology is many things, but not waterproof. it’s going to take a few hours to survey the damages, so we’re going to rebook everyone.”

lovely. but the northwest agent said she’d book us on the gr-minneapolis/st. paul-dallas/fort worth instead, no biggie. we only had to wait like 20 minutes. and then we got to minneapolis w/o a problem.

boarded plane #2.

gate agents close up the door, and the flight attendant gets on the PA and says that there’s a warning light on in the cockpit and they were going to get a mechanic to take a look at it quick, should be about 5 minutes. ok, so the mechanic shows up and thinks it’s a paperwork discrepancy, so he had to get his supervisor. supervisor comes a few minutes later and can’t approve us to take off, so they called the higher-up supervisor as well. at this point, we were supposed to leave minneapolis half hour ago. starting to get a little impatient, but we’ll live. then the flight attendant goes back on the radio and says “ground control here has put us on service watch till 11am” (central). it was 10:05 (i looked at my watch). so yeah… we’re just sitting for another half hour and then the flight attendant came back for a third time and said “we regret to inform you that we’re cancelling flight 411… gate agents will help you rebook.”

yeah. rebooking 18 people isn’t a quick process. so we got on the flight that left at 1:34pm, which meant we were stuck at the airport for a good 2 1/2 hours still. now minneapolis airport is nice and all, but…

so we finally took off at 1:34pm and landed here in dallas at 4:00. we were supposed to land at 11:30.

so obviously we were all pretty dang exhausted, and headed off to the hotel. decent, but really, i wouldn’t consider it (4 stars), but they must use a different rating system or something. *shrug*

so anne, michelle and i get up to our room and there’s one king sized bed. so down we go to the front desk and request 2 roll-outs - they can only get us one due to fire hazards. and there’s no pool. and there’s a few restaurants, but it’s soooo expensive… so last night, we (the group) was discussing dumping where we’re at and going to a diff hotel. instead, ron (advisor) went air-mattress shopping this morning. (the 3 guys on my network design team are sharing a room as well, and they pulled the mattress off one of the beds - they have 2 full-sized - and one slept on the mattress, one on the box spring and the other on the 3rd bed - ouch!!!!)

so the hotel isn’t ideal by any stretch. the whole flight situation was crap.

but richards group, and lunch at this great tex-mex place called Gloria’s, made up for it.
i don’t expect e-mail access the rest of the time (thanks julie for letting me borrow your computer!!!!), so if you e-mail me, you won’t get a reply till probably tuesday (i have wayyyyyyy too much to do for class monday, and i have that black-tie dinner downtown GR monday night).

have a great week guys!