All goes well, of course, and I begin waiting for my plane. I meet up with Jeff and Craig and we hop onto the plane to Chicago. I cannot remember if this plane left on time or what ended up happening with it, but I do know we felt rushed to get to our next flight. We only had about 20 minutes until it was scheduled to take off.

So we hurried off the plane to find that our flight to Philidelphia was cancelled. Sweet! We went to a ticket counter and they told us that they had us setup to fly to Dallas at 6:30 (2 hours later) and then from Dallas to Philly with an arrival time of midnite. Super sweet!

We call our travel agency and they set it all up to switch airlines and fly directly out of chicago at 6:20 arriving at around 8:20. Thinking that to be awesome, we trek across O'Hare to our new terminal.

Let's pause for a moment here to see if you can guess the common theme of the story.

Bad luck.

So we sit and wait for our flight, which gets bumped back to 7:50, 30 minutes before our original arrival time. Whatever. We get on the plane and get to Philly at 10:30. Then we head down to get Craig's bag and Jeff's which the jerks stole at the gate on the second flight. We quickly found Jeff's bag but not Craig's. Our best guess is that it went to Dallas...

Finally out of the airport, we get our car and head to Horsham. Philidelphia is a pretty neat place. The actual town is pretty gross, but I did see some neat stuff. I would prefer downtown New York to Downtown Philly anyday. We get to Horsham and find our hotel after quite a bit of navigating. We check in and find that we each have our own room. Our own studio suite as they called them.

The room...

Ok, so the hotel seems ok, no lobby, no commons area, no vending machines, nothing most hotels have. It is an extended stay hotel. The room itself, smelled like funny. I can't describe it, but I can just say it was wierd at best.

The bed was hard and itchy and the pillow was a waste of fabric. The chair felt like it was going to snap in two when you looked at it, there was a fridge, a stove, 2 plates, 2 forks, 2 knives, two spoons, 2 glasses, and a strainer.

They offered an ergonomic workstation that consisted of a barstool by an island in the "kitchen." The bright side was one of the 20 channels the tv got was Cartoon Network and my alarm clock worked even though its 9v battery was dangling out the back.

I found a used wash cloth in the shower hanging behind the curtain. That was cool.

If all that didn't suck, the next morning at 7 I could hear this woman singing. Not just singing I could hear her high vibrato tearing through my walls. So I took a shower and got ready to go. During our time in the hotel we heard a guitarist tearing it up, dogs barking, tvs blaring, alarms alarming, and fat dudes eating and 'hanging out' in their rooms with the doors open and their shirts off. It was like being in the dorms.

The majority of our stay was ok, we had some good food at El Vez in downtown Philly and some brewery in a suburb. Expensive, but all on iMed's bill.

I played DS with Rick and Andy quite a bit, and found out just how fun a DS is to have when you are with someone else that has one too.

I also learned how much it sucked to run out of batteries on the front half of a 2 hour drive...

So anyway, Craig's bag finally shows up Tuesday night at 10PM.

Then Thursday we head out. We start to the airport early hoping to switch to a different flight and get home early. As we drive, I hear my phone ring and find American Airlines to be calling me. They just wanted to let me know that my flight to Chicago had been cancelled. Sweet!

We call our travel agency again to get a new flight arranged and we get switched over to U.S. Airways again. The flight was scheduled to leave at 3 and get to Chicago at 5 then we would have a flight to Des Moines at 7 arriving at 8. How wonderful that would have been...

At the airport, I got manhandled again. This time I got wanded, patted down, carefully searched, and had my stuff examined by hand.

We get on our plane, 2 Eastern (1 Central). Our plane taxis out to the runway and then the pilot tells us "O'Hare has a ground stop on all flights, we will be delayed indefinitely; it could be 10 minutes or it could be 1 hour." One hour later, the plane has turned into a sauna. The flight attendandts pass out ice water. By the time I get my glass the ice is melted and it could better be called luke warm water.

Since some of the older passengers were looking bad, they had the pilot use the engine to increase power to the air conditioning. Thats good. Now we are sitting on the tarmack, running our engines, burning fuel to keep old people cool, when they could have just taken us back to the airport an hour ago.

30 minutes pass and we get the word that we will be taking off shortly. I believe we take off within 30 more minutes. While in the air, we take an indirect flight to Chicago to avoid some violent storms. We fly north into Canada and over most of the great lakes, which uses up more fuel. Super Sweet!

As we approach O'Hare, we get word that "Unfortunately some adverse weather in Chicago has forced O'Hare to close and they have put us into a holding pattern. However, we don't have enough fuel so we are being diverted to Milwaukee." Extra Super Sweet!

So we land in Milwaukee (6:30 Central 5.5 hours into the flight) and are told that since planes like this don't usually land here, they are having trouble getting the gate connected. They tell us that we must stay on the plane.

After people start to get out of hand, they tell us that if we want to stay in Milwaukee, we can get off, but we won't get any checked bags. Lots of people leave.

They decide to let us all off to get some food. Just as I'm about to buy something they call us back to the plane. I don't buy anything because I just want to get back to Chicago and get my gyro.

Our current time is around 7:15 Central.

8:40 Central, our plane takes off.

9:00 Central, we land in Chicago.

We head to the gate to find that our gate is full with a plane that is staying the night there. So they are "negotiating another gate."

9:30 Central, we get into our gate and begin unloading. Our 8.5 hour flight has come to an end. Extra Super Sweet Ultra!

We find that our flight to Des Moines, which had been pushed back to 8pm last we had heard, was cancelled. So was the next flight to Des Moines. Extra Super Sweet Ultra Turbo!

CRIPES! So we get supper, our first bite to eat since 7:30 that morning when we went to IHOP.

Now we go to the baggage claim to get our stuff since it should be there as we are stranded in Chicago for the night.

Jeff gets his bag right away, but no bag for Craig...again.

We arrange our flight to Des Moines at 9:52 the next morning and ask if the airline is putting anyone up in hotels. He gives us a number to call for a discount rate at some of the area hotels.

We decide we might be best off just renting a car and driving home. So we start calling some car rental places. No! All one way rentals were taken from every car rental place in Chicago. Bitchin!

Ok,we're stuck lets get a hotel. No! Every hotel is filled with people whose flight got cancelled.

Crap, umm, how about a train. Amtrack goes to Oscaloosa(whateva) and we could get someone from work to pick us up. No! The next train headed to Oscaloosa would leave Chicago at 1 the next day.

We find a guy who is arraning a limo for 10 people to Green Bay, they will split the cost 10 ways and it would actually be cheaper than their tickets. We think thats a great idea and quickly find 3 more people from Des Moines. But only 3, not enough. Plus one of them was a girl who was kinda wierded out by the three guys trying to get her to get into a limo and drive away with them. No!

We find out that the Chicago Police are handing out cots, so we round up 3 cots and some plane pillows and blankets and set up camp for the night with hundreds of other people. It is now midnight central time.

We find a nice place by the outside window and see that we can see the line for the cab very well. Also, since we are under some lights they can see us too. So I strike a pose smiling at people as they go by. I held this pose for 2 hours. I had at least 4 people take my picture and many very pleased people walk by.

Finally, at 2 in the morning, I fall asleep. I was ready to sleep until about 6 when we would have to start trying to get into the terminal again and try to get home.

On the way in, I get searched...AGAIN! Full service again.

Finally, I got some breakfast and went and sat at our gate for 3 hours.

About an hour into it we found out that our flight had been moved to the next gate down. Another hour later, our flight was moved 6 more gates down the hall. We finally got on the plane, about 20 minutes after it was supposed to take off, and head for Des Moines.

I fall asleep and wake up to a pain in my ear as we are landing... It is over, I'm home.

Rachael picked me up and I came home to a very happy puppy and a much needed shower. I anticipate an early bedtime tonight...