Archive for July, 2007

What a bad day for me today I was supposed to go to Pensacola in Florida to enjoy a couple of sunny days at the beach but I’m back in the hotel in Chicago instead and will work tomorrow. What happened? Well, first the flight got delayed for 1 hour which isn’t a big deal and after we got boarded everything looked fine until the pilot put the engines into idle mode after going to the runway and told us that we might have to wait for another 2 hours as all south bound flights were not allowed to take off due to bad weather conditions. As you know from previous posts I got already used to delayed flights so I was listening to my ipod and looking forward to drinking a couple of cold beers at the beach soon but it should get different. After 1,5 hours standing on the airstrip waiting for take off the pilot announced that we will go back to the gate as they might try a different route to get to Pensacola for which they would have to get more fuel. But once returned to the gate the captain announced after 10 minutes that he is sorry to say that the flight got canceled and we have all to get off the plane which we did. After standing in line in front of the counter at the gate we got told that we have to call American Airlines for re-booking using a special red phones which we would find on a certain location. I found out that there is a 1-800 number to call them as well which I did just to find out that there is no other flight available today and all flights for tomorrow are booked out already and the next available flight would be Saturday morning….. So I canceled the whole trip also asking how to get my already checked-in bag back. For that I had to go to their Baggage service counter where they told me that my bag will automatically get delivered to Pensacola on the next available flight although I would stay in Chicago. From Pensacola it will get returned to Chicago and from there it will be hopefully somehow delivered to my hotel. Unbelievable!!! As you can imagine I’m sitting now in my hotel room drinking a couple of cold beers trying to forget what has happened today. Thank god the guy at the reception of the hotel here had mercy after hearing my story and offered to get me some cold beers to my room…..

After getting this hint from a friend who was already there this year I’ve booked my vacation back in good old Europe today: I’ll ride the waves in the south of France in September  Check this out:  www.go4surf.com