A flying fiasco!

Back in the fall when we were flying out to Bozeman, Ollie wrote a blog entitled “adventures in air travel”.  It was about how his boot bag got lost in Detroit.  I’m not even sure that qualifies as an adventure.  Also, I just one-upped  his “adventure” like none other.  So as a fun little exercise, I decided that it would be interesting to list everything that went wrong with my trip home from Wisconsin, just to see how long it got.  Here, for your reading pleasure, is that list:

I started the trip off in a bad mood because I wasn’t happy with my races in Madison, and I was already feeling torn about not going to the Birkie, and not seeing my friends there.  I also felt like it had been a bit of a waste to go out there, since I wouldn’t have gone if I’d known I was going to just come back after the Madison races.

I arrived in Detroit to discover than my flight to Burlington had been canceled.

It was 9:30 at night, so the outbound flights were winding down for the night.

I made a desperate attempt to get on a flight to Manchester, which failed.

I waited in a Delta help desk line for a long time.

There were no other flights to Burlington until Tuesday night (it was Sunday night at the time).

The cancellation was due to weather (though it was clear in Burlington), which means that I couldn’t get a free hotel room.

I also couldn’t fly with another airline, unless I wanted to buy new tickets—also because it was a weather cancellation.

Finally I got the last seat on a flight to Montreal Monday morning. (I guess this was maybe actually a good thing…).

The shuttle to the hotel at which I was given a slight discount took almost an hour to come.

By this time it was almost 1:00 am.

It took over an hour of waiting to get a ticket printed for my new itinerary the next morning.

While on my flight to Montreal on Monday morning, I realized that I didn’t have my jacket with me any more.

I’d somehow left the jacket in Detroit.

I felt very dumb and hated myself a lot.

The $300 check that I’d won at the Supertour was in the pocket of the jacket.

My luggage didn’t come to Montreal.

The baggage claim tags for my luggage was in the pocket of my jacket that was in Detroit.

So far the baggage has not been located by Delta.

I get to fly again in 3 days!

I think that’s just about it.  I realize that this was a very negative blog, and though that is highly reflective of my current mental state, I should probably try to make it a little less biased by my brain chemistry.

THE HAPPY PART: In reality, I have a lot to be excited about!  Halfway through our drive out to Madison, I found out that I’d made the team for the U-26 World Biathlon Championships! Really this should be an awesome trip, and a great chance to get some more biathlon experience and see what it is like to race in Europe.  So I’ll have a few days back here in Craftsbury to train and shoot and then I’m heading across the pond to Estonia!