Raisinets and Bugles x 2

Well, I wasn't planning on writing again until I got to Colombia...but this was just all too eventful/frustrating not to record, so this will be my farewell post. (And it is times like these that I am reminded that my life really should be a movie, I should just strap a video camera to the front of my head)

So, earlier Saturday I'm trying to get on the computer to get my confirmation number and exact flight times...I knew it was somewhere around out at 6 from philadelphia, into atlanta, arrive in milwaukee at about 10. Well my cousin's internet had gone out so I had to get a hold of my little sister to get the info. As I'm calling my aunt says, "Are you sure you don't want to just stay an extra day?" I said, "No, I really need to get home so I can get ready for Colombia." I should have just answered yes, because here it is Sunday morning and I'm sitting in the Wellesley Inn in Atlanta. How did I get here? I don't even know if I can remember it all.

I flew from philadelphia to atlanta with no problems. Now, some of you are probably thinking, "There's your first problem, what the hell'd you fly down there for?" And that's a good question, I'm still not quite sure of the answer besides my tickets were 175.00 roundtrip from expedia.

So once I get to Atlanta, they keep delaying my flight, and they made us switch gates 3 times. Finally, 2 hours after we were supposed to take off (10:30 at night) they tell us, "Your plane has arrived, unfortunately the interior of the plane is too hot for you to enter right now, so we just need to cool it off and then you can board." They get on the loud speaker probably 5 more times over the next 45 minutes to tell us the same thing." I'm like, "yeah yeah, turn on the air conditioning, do whatever you gotta do, just tell us when we can get on the plane." Finally they let us board the plane, where we sit again for another 45 minutes, where they make another 5 announcements this time saying: "Be sure to turn off all electronic devices, anything that has an off/on switch must be switched to off." Yeah, yeah, we got it, all of our stuff is off. After the 5th of this announcement and one random one which I'm still confused by that said something about "We got clearance to turn on the right engine to help cool the plane, this is going to cost our company 2,000 dollars, but we just really want you guys to be comfortable" (what does that even mean?!) After all of this I knew something was up...and 10 minutes later the steward gets on the phone and says, "I'm really sorry, we won't be able to take off tonight because all 4 of the workers on board will have exceeded the 16 hour work day, it's illegal for us to take off." There is an IMMEDIATE uproar in the plane, people begin freaking out. At this point I was just laughing a little on the inside because stuff like this ALWAYS happens to me. The man next to me is yelling so loudly at the flight attendants he is either a) going to have a heart attack, or b) physically assault the plane crew. The other passengers are telling him to shut up, and I'm beginning to feel embarassed, hoping they don't think he's my dad. The flight attendant continues apologizing over the loud speaker, telling us that he really in fact does care, as the man next to me continues to verbally assault him, "YOU TREATED US WORSE THAN AWFUL, YOU DON'T CARE, YOU DON'T CARE, THIS IS BULLSHIT." The flight attendant begins to visibly cry as he is standing at the head of the airplane and keeps repeating into the microphone, "We do care, we do care..." Oh man.

I of course got in line behind the crazy man who held up my line for so long that I couldn't get a flight out until 1:00 in the afternoon the next day, and I said I'd just take a flight voucher instead of being put up in a hotel. As I'm walking away they say, "You'll get a flight voucher for $50, maybe 100." you've got to be kidding me, this hassle is worth more than that I was thinking, but I just kept on walking towards concourse B, because I was advised that was the best place for sleeping. I got to concourse B and it was absolutely deserted besides the 5 janitors who were standing around talking to each other. I called my dad to tell him what had happened, and I started crying on the phone. haha this is funny now as I'm writing it. He was like, "What is everything fine? Do you feel safe?" I was like, "I feel fine, I just really wanted to get home to get ready for south america, getting stuck in an airport overnight a 2nd time within 3 months isn't as funny as the first time" (I got stuck in the dallas, tx airport for 28 hours in april) I look up from my phone call to see the janitors eyeing me like, "Is she having a nervous breakdown?" I look down to double check my departure time for the morning only to realize that these tickets haven't been issued in my name, they've been issued to Kevin Riley, who the heck is Kevin Riley? (hey sorry man if you have troubles flying tomorrow) I sprint the half mile back to the Delta counters only to find nobody left working them...I pull secret ops and bust into a Delta office where both men sitting at their desk look extremely startled to see me, and when I ask if this is the delta office it took them a solid 8 seconds for either to utter a word. I spit out a million words a minute as I explained, "I am not Kevin Riley, I just need to get to Milwaukee!" Round 2 was much more successful as Molly Reddy now has a direct flight to MKE out at 9:55 AM, and they gave me a hotel voucher.

So as I ventured out to find my hotel shuttle, there was of course no Wellesley shuttle in sight, I mean honestly, why would there be? Lucky for me, a man in a Best Western uniform said, "Where you going honey?...I'm going by there I can take you." He told another Wellesley in waiting to come too, it was a middle aged woman, she says to me, "Is this legit?" I was like, "I really have no idea, but I don't really care." So, the Best Western shuttle was filled with 2 Wellesley customers and a Holiday Inn-goer, and we arrived successfully, thank you sir!

I checked into the hotel with no problems, and stopped at the vending machines to buy dinner and breakfast. I put my money in for raisinets, click the button, watch the metal coil spin, not quite far enough because nothing falls. That would happen to me, I put another 85 cents in so this time 2 fall. I think, I'll need breakfast so I'll get some bugles, and the same exact thing happens. That would happen to me.

So I get to my room, and I'm overjoyed to see there's wireless. Checking my email always makes me happy, and I was sure I would have tons since I hadn't checked it in over 24 hours. I only had 6 new emails, 5 of which were facebook notifications, 4 of which were posts from my little sister. awesome. I was thinking, not even raisinets and bugles x 2 can remedy this situation.

I checked my junk mail just to make sure...where I realized that I'd been missing a ton of the mass emails sent from aiesec colombia, since I just got added to their email list. I randomly clicked on one, and what do you know, it's a call for volunteers to house the new trainee, Molly Reddy, and if you can't house her, you can greet her at the airport, we need to make this great for her! Well...that made my night a little better.

sorry for this extremely long post.