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08/03/2008: "Travel"
Reading other people's blogs recently, I thought again about how I never do that myself. So, to start back up, I'll first cut and paste my input to Charles Stross's (love his books) blog, about worst travel experience:
A 72 hour trip from Manchester (NH, New England), to Beijing. Planned to arrive two days early, actually arrived a day late.
On Friday, bad weather, but no problem, my flight to Newark (NJ, near NY,NY) was early, before it was supposed to hit. Delayed a bit, then board, then sit on the plane for a while. Then they cancelled, so everyone gets in line. Big problem - it was the Friday before all the local schools had a week's vacation, so everything is booked (and cancelled).
Managed to drain the batteries on two phones at the same time (One on hold, then talking with the elite desk, the other online checking for available flights), while in line still in the terminal. Best option I could get, they put me on a flight from Boston the next morning (45 miles, about an hour drive).
OK, so go back home, try to arrange a last minute ride to Boston (since my return was still to MHT) - of course most of the airport shuttles were full. Get to Boston Saturday morning, and of course, the flight is delayed. Fortunately, it was solely because of crew timeout issues, so it took off when they said it would, and I didn't miss the flight from Newark to Beijing (but it was close).
Flight to Beijing was average, some entertainment problems, and seat power broke after about two hours. Up by Greenland, lots of activity in back, someone was sick.
Right as the in-flight display shows us at our closest approach to the North Pole, I feel a long slow gradual bank, oh &*&#..... Sure enough, that sick person was worse, and there are no good hospitals in Northern Siberia (above Beijing), so we are diverting back to Goose Bay Canada, despite already being at the halfway point.
Another couple of hours go by, and we are getting close to Canada, and more announcements - the person felt better, so we were re-dirverting all the way back to Newark. Net result for that trip, a 13 hour flight from Newark, to Newark. Net result for the day, 18 hours from Boston to NY.
Unfortunately, I didn't get a good shot, but here is a fuzzy camera phone display of the inflight display - http://dchampagne.com/photos/SyncML%20Trips/2008%2002%20Beijing/img057.jpg
After an hour and a half, finally have a coupon for a hotel, and am on a shuttle bus to go get 5 hours sleep before trying again the next day (I was rebooked for the next flight - but a lot of people were rerouted all over the place, or delayed several days).
The next day, start the Newark to Beijing trip all over again - same plane, same entertainment problems (the choice of 8, no 4 channels), etc.. I also found out that shortly after I got through the line, the computers crashed (at 2 am), and the majority of the line had an extra half hour of sitting around...
I've also spent 8 hours on the tarmac at Montreal (Not allowed off because we were a diverted Madrid to Newark flight, and customs wouldn't take us), followed by spending the night on the floor in Newark with my 10 year old son (fortunately, he was able to watch all 3 original Star Wars movies, plus several others I had with me on my laptop), too many long delays to count, I was at the conference in Japan that started all the burning Dell laptop news, and having food poisoning all the way from France to NY (including going through passport control and customs trying not to lose it again).