Just One Thing After Another
I had a meeting at Fermilab on Tuesday afternoon, so I planned a flight out of Washington at 6:00 PM on Monday. I know that it takes anywhere from 2 to 3 hours to get to Reagan National from my house during the morning rush, so I almost always fly out the night before. I got to the airport slightly early to avoid the afternoon rush, and when I got to the gate I discovered the flight to Chicago at five o'clock was delayed due to weather. As has happened many times to me, the weather problem was not in Chicago nor Washington. It was somewhere in between.
After a few hours of waiting United announced that my flight was canceled. However, United was prepared. They had boarding passes for a different flight ready as soon as they announced the cancellation. The wait continued.
Eventually the thunderstorms arrived in Washington and prevented the inbound planes from landing. My new flight was canceled about 9:30 PM, and I was sent home. I raced home so I could go to bed and get up at 6:00 AM to start all over again.
I left about 6:30 AM for a 9:45 AM flight. It was not early enough to be guaranteed that I could make it, but I was too tired to try to get up earlier. Traffic seem reasonable until I hit the George Washington Parkway. I got to the airport at 9:00 AM. I decided to park in the daily lot instead of economy to save time, but the daily lot for terminals B & C were full. I went to A and walked. I tried to check in at the kiosk, but it could not find my changed reservation. I checked in a the counter. Luckily, neither the ticket counter nor security was crowded so I caught my flight.
Everything went smoothly until I got to the rental car shuttle. The air conditioning was broken on the shuttle. It was in the 90's in Chicago and I was using an off airport rental car company so that was a problem.
When I got to the hotel the problems continued. They did not have a non-smoking room available. I have blogged about how shocked I was at how noticeable the smell of smoke is in hotel rooms. My key did not work and I had to go back down to the lobby to have it fixed. When I got in the room it was pretty warm. I checked the air conditioner. It was running and set to 70. I turned it down to 60 and waited. After a hour without any improvement, I called the front desk. The sent someone to check it. He reset it and said it would be better in 5 minutes. It did not improve, and when I called back I was told that the maintenance man had left for the day. I was given a fan.