One Hell Of A Journey to India

I have been back for almost a week and am finally over the journey from hell! It all started when I got to the airport in DC on Sunday afternoon, thank goodness I was 3 hours early for my flight to Newark. My flight to Newark that had actually been canceled...thanks for the warning Continental. At the check in computer I saw they had put my on the flight to Newark and Bombay for the next day, Monday -- I was not having that if I had to walk all the way to Newark. Turns out they canceled the flight because of the insane winds we were having on the east coast. I was willing to take the train or whatever I needed to do to make it to Newark by 7pm to catch my India flight. Luckily, as I was standing there a seat opened up on the 3pm flight that had been delayed until 4pm. Problem solved. Or not. When they canceled my first flight they took me of the India flight as well...clearly they did not realize who they were dealing with. So I got back on the India flight but without a seat, the ticketing guy said they had to let me on and that I would get a seat when I got there.

So off we go to Newark and things seem to be going a-ok. I get there and get my middle seat (I did have an aisle but was not about to throw a fit, I was just happy to be going). So around 7:30, right before we begin boarding, I get a text message from a friend asking about the "lockdown" at Newark terminal C. I quickly replied there was no lockdown and everything was fine. Sure enough, CNN knew before I did. About 10 minutes later we were told to exit the terminal and reenter through security because someone had gotten through from the outside. Awesome. So after 3 hours of standing around like cattle, literally thousands of people, with not one person telling us what was going on, they started moving people back through security. I finally made it back to the gate at around midnight.

So, at this point the plane was going to leave at 12:30, then 1:30, then at about 2am they made an announcement that because of the time lapse there was a federal regulation they were working through to try to get the crew to fly (apparently they have to rest for a certain number of hours or something like that). They would have an update in 30 minutes. So, at around 3am, we are told the flight was delayed until 4:45pm the next afternoon. Awesome. There were some hotel rooms, women and children first, then old people, kind of like the titanic. I, in fact, did feel like my ship was sinking. The crowd was getting restless, they even brought in the police to keep people from crowding the desk -- NOT a happy crowd. Instead of waiting around in the chaos, I decided to just find a spot at the airport. Given that I had no coat and didn't want to fight security again the next day, my best move was to stay put. So I found a little phone booth and curled up to attempt to sleep. Airport floors are very hard. And cold.

I finally got up at 7am because I was freezing and went to the nearest store and bought the most attractive New York sweatshirt one has ever seen. I got very familiar with the Newark airport terminal C over the next 8 hours. The good news being that after waiting in several long lines at customer service I finally got my aisle seat back. I also got interviewed by the AP (http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/man_who_caused_newark_airport_chaos_iObEyvN0ar1QWGdnliZZ4I). I am not a fan of this guy that caused this mess, I hope never to meet him in a dark alley. I also found Newark and TSA totally incompetent to handle this situation, not a lot of faith in our security system at the moment.

4pm rolls around and we board, the travel gods finally started to smile on me and there was no one in the middle seat in the row I was in. Apparently a few people had jumped ship the day before. After all said and done, Continental gave us one free drink and 10% off our next flight. Finally, I made it to India. After a night sleeping in the airport, a night sleeping in the plane, and a night sleeping in a car, I made it back about 3am on Wednesday. It has taken me several days to get back to sleeping normally but I think I'm about there.

It has been great to be back and has been quite busy, as of today we have over 60 visitors, a full house. The weather is starting to turn and its gonna get H-O-T real soon.