I'm cursed!

Remember the TV show "LOST," about the people who crashed on the crazy island that wouldn't let them leave? I now know how they felt:

Thursday night I went to the airport for my 9:30PM flight. One hour before the scheduled take-off time they came over the intercom and told us the pilot had called in sick and they would give us an update in 20 minutes. An hour or two later they told us the flight crew was not coming and our flight had been rescheduled for 6:30 the next morning, but they didn't tell us what happened. We all had to go to the main desk, re-book our tickets, and get a hotel room for the night. I've never seen such slow service in my life. Apparently there is a big marathon in Honolulu this weekend and they couldn't find very many hotel rooms for us. It was 1:00AM by the time I got up to the counter to see what they could do for me. After standing in line for a while, we the people started to get a little upset. At one point a representative was sent out to tell us that the reason the flight crew didn't show up for duty was because one of them had died in the hotel that night.

I was presented with two options. I could take a 10:00PM (Friday) direct flight from Honolulu to Salt Lake City, or I could stick with the 6:30AM (Friday) flight to LA and then get on a Delta flight later that afternoon for Salt Lake. I chose the latter because I just wanted to get home. They offered to pay for a hotel room, but since I would just have to come back four hours later (and go through security all over again), I decided to wait it out at the airport. I asked for a voucher for a free flight (or a discounted flight). No luck. I asked for a voucher for free food in the airport. They gave me a $15 voucher. So I spent the rest of the night pacing the airport, reading, and trying to sleep on a hard chair or on the hard ground, periodically murmuring to myself about the poor service I consistently experience from US airlines (Southwest and Jetblue are exempted from my murmurings).

6:30AM came around - still no flight crew. At 8:00AM the crew finally showed up. We all applauded their arrival (half mocking, and half out of sheer relief). We took off at 8:30AM, flew five hours to LA (they did give us free food on the plane), and then I found out that my flight to SLC would be delayed one hour. I wanted to punch someone, but if I had punched the guy to my right he would have beaten me up, and if I had punched the little old lady to my left..........well..........you just don't do things like that. At 5:30PM we took off from LA and arrived in SLC about 90 minutes later. I made it, right? Well yes, but come to find out that my luggage did not. Of course it didn't make it! Why would my luggage arrive with me? That would mean something happened the way it was supposed to. I gave the representatives my address and now I'll wait to see if it shows up in the next couple of days or if the island kept it.

Joseph picked me up from the airport, we came home to devour some food, and after almost 48 hours with zero sleep, I'm going to crash. This gives new meaning to the phrase "Home Sweet Home."