Monday, October 23, 2023

An Army Travels On Its Sleeping Pills

 Our youngest son and I have been in Alabama over the weekend, primarily to see the Bama - Tennessee game. The game was fabulous, but the travel has been exhausting.

It started at 0830 on Thursday morning. The flight was supposed to get us into Mobile at 1730, just in time for a delicious meal in Mobile and an easy check-in to our VRBO in Summerdale.

We sat on the tarmac in San Diego for over an hour because, according to the reports, there was bad weather. In San Diego. On a perfect day. Other outlets said there was a screw up in their air traffic control software, which was far more believable.

Thus the first domino fell.

We missed our connection in Houston, spent 5 hours at IAH, caught the last IAH-MOB flight and landed at MOB around 2230. From there, we got our car and by the time we hit Daphne, the only place open for noms was a Waffle House. Waffle House at night is quite the experience.

After a meal seasoned with strange goings-on behind the counter, we got to our VRBO around 0020. The electronic door lock didn't work. We couldn't get in and calling the owner did nothing but get an answering machine. We ended up finding a Marriott near the Wharf in Orange Beach and got to bed around 0115.

Oof.

Things developed from there. It was actually a fun trip, but totally exhausting. More blogging later when sanity returns to life.

3 comments:

Mostly Nothing said...

The only thing airlines are good at is lying.

tim eisele said...

Well, there you go. They heard they were supposed to be good at "Flying", but accidentally dropped the first letter.

I assume that the airline has less liability for weather delays than for mechanical or staffing delays, and so they will try to claim it is a weather problem if at all possible.

K T Cat said...

The other thing we learned is go through Dallas instead of Houston. Houston is a smaller airport and has fewer amenities. If you're going to be stuck somewhere for 5 hours, Dallas is better than Houston.