Planes, Trains and Automobiles

Everyone, well, people of my generation have seen the Steve Martin & John Candy buddy movie "Planes, Trains and Automobiles." Yesterday I lived it. The first flight, Seattle to Minneapolis went well. When I deplaned I checked the departure board for the Madison flight but it wasn't listed. It should have been boarding in a hour but there was no listing. I asked at the check in for the nearest flight and was told "the Madison flight has been rescheduled to 7am tomorrow." whuha? She told me I needed to go to a certain gate for further information. So I go down to the other gate where I'm told Madison has been fogged in for a few days and nothing is flying in, so my options were...

1. wait until 7am. This has a moment's appeal as I could hang out at a bar near the airport and watch the Ohio State vs LSU game. But I really need to be on time for my job.
2. rent a car. There were 3 other guys in the same situation and by the time we'd made it near the front of the line it seemed like a good idea.
3. fly to Milwaukee and get bussed to Madison. I remembered the ad "sit back and leave the driving to us" and it made sense. The flight would leave in an hour and I'd be in Milwaukee by 10pm. 90 minutes later I'd be home. 

So I went over to the bar and ordered a pint to help me sleep. I ordered another and poured into my coffee cup for the wait before the wheels were up. 

We'd managed to completely fill a 757 with both the Madison and regular Milwaukee fliers. As the 757 started to roll towards the tarmac it came to a sudden halt. The pilot then tells us the angle of attack tube isn't registering and we need to have a breaker reset. I was ready to find the panel myself at this point. We turned around and got back to the gate when he came back on and said it was back in order.  So we were off.  The beers helped but it was a short flight.  The bus NorthWorst chartered had seats for 55 passengers. There were 78 of us. I noticed Midwest had a similar charter on the other side of the departures so I took it upon myself to see if they had room for me. The were great. I didn't have any baggage since it was still sitting in Minneapolis so I took a seat. 15 minutes later the remaining Northwest passengers I'd ditched joined me. My dad met me at the Madison airport at midnight and by 12:30 I was nestled in bed for a wonderful sleep.

Work was, well, work. 

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