We were on our way to Japan, but had a layover in california.
Oh, california is in a different time zone. We forgot that.
So we had a nice lunch and then realized owait WE'RE AN HOUR LATE
and we ran as hard as we could and the japanese staff yelled at us "run faster" and they'd already closed the door but they let us on.

(This was more complicated than it sounds: our previous flight had been cancelled and we were shuffled to a different airline, and let me tell you if you ever get to fly Nippon Airways it's as nice as Swissair, several steps above american carriers or even JAL.)

I was travelling to the US from Australia. The flight had a stop in New Zealand before heading to Hawaii, and then LAX. About 30-40 minutes out of New Zealand one of the engines on our plane failed. An attendant made an announcement that we still had three engines, and would be safely making it back to New Zealand in order to put us on a different and more sound plane.

People were mildly freaking out in any case. And I could tell that the landing was okay, but a little wobbly. On the way out of the plane I heard one of the attendants commenting that even she felt a little freaked out.

Eight hours later we all finally had another plane to continue our journeys. Most people had to find accomodation in Hawaii. I lucked out (?), because I had arranged to arrive early in Honolulu, go through customs, then play on the beach for a number of hours before catching my next flight. No beach. Just scuttling to the next plane and arriving in the US at the expected time.

On my way from Austin, TX, to Rock Springs, WY, there was a big storm in Houston, which delayed the plane that was supposed to get me from Denver to Rock Springs. I finally got into Denver five hours late. I didn't want to spend a night in a hotel and I didn't want to chop a day off of my vacation, so I rented a car and drove five hours, from 12:30 AM to 5:30 AM and got to my friend's house at dawn.

On the way back, the flight from Rock Springs to Denver was literally diverted into fucking Nebraska, because of a thunderstorm at the Denver airport. So I missed the flight from Denver to Austin. I had seat 1B (first class*). I got the last seat on another flight five hours later, and that seat was 28E (cattle class).

*I hadn't flown or gone in vacation in six years, so I thought I'd spring for First Class. I won't do that again, because, at least for domestic flights, the difference is not worth the cost.

Also, fuck United Airlines, Denver, and flying general. And fuck the United States government for not properly funding air traffic control or airport maintenance and for creating the TSA, which is pure security theater and was created by Prick Cheney to keep the citizens scared.

Am I bitter? You bet your ass. I may just very well drive next year and say to Hell with flying that 1,000 miles.

Ugh, I've had too many flying events. Too many.

For instance - a single engine Bellanca with a sick motor and radio which we had to fly from a dry lake bed near the Salton Sea to Van Nuys during Santa Ana winds - bouncy/bouncy doesn't come close. Doing a 9000 foot dive-bomber landing into Van Nuys under control from handheld signal lights n the tower was not fun. I'm not planning on doing that again!!!

My wife was up with her sister when the passenger door fell off of her sister's Cessna. At least that wasn't as bad as when one our friends - a former Navy fighter pilot - literally bent a wing and popped rivets out of the wing of his Cherokee by accidentally flying into an embedded thunderstorm.

Then there was Oct 17, 1989 when, on our approach into SFO, the Loma Prieta earthquake hit. The pilot came on, very shaky, scared voice, and told us that the runway was damaged and we would have to find another place to land. So we got a low level tour over the burning city eventually ending up at San Jose, even closer to the quake's epicenter.

Then there was the flight in Dullas where we came in through a thunder/snow storm so intense that the United pilot next to me wondered why we were not diverting to another airport. Once landed the ground crew could not bring us to the gate because of the lightning danger.

On approach to Dallas a front went through and the temperature dropped from 70F to 15F in a few minutes and hurricane force winds hit. I listened to ATC and most flights diverted, but I heard our pilot say "I'll give it a try". I think my blood pressure went to 500/200 and my pulse to 250. (Turned out to be a smooth landing.)

Then we got ice while waiting for takeoff from DC National - after airborne we flew very low and slow and the pilot came back and looked out my window asking if I had seen any ice.

Then the drunken flight from Montreal to LAX with a 10+ hour delay in Toronto - we had already passed US immigration in Montreal so they did not want to let anyone off the airplane.

Then there was when United's airplane broke on a flight SFO=>DCA and we ended up being put up at a truck stop in Aurora at 3am (and we ended up paying for our missed reservation in DC.)

And then my wild flight LAX=>?? when I was booked at 12:40am and I missed the flight by 24 hours and had to do a midnight rebooking. Which was kinda OK because that delay caused me to get engaged and later married.

At least I missed a flight out of Montevideo, Uruguay to Newark - my friends who did make that flight ended up landing through the smoke of the burning buildings just after the 9/11 attacks. Because all US flights were grounded, others who missed the flight had to fly to Mexico City, thence to Tijuana, and then drive across the border and drive home after that. My wife was trapped in Atlanta and couldn't get home for a couple of weeks (fortunately her sister lived in Atlanta at the time.)

Once from Mexico City to SFO they emergency landed in Guadalajara. They put our airplane way out somewhere, not near anything and surrounded the plane with armed military and dogs, evacuated the plane, and separated out all of the Americans. Eventually we got to re-board and fly through a hurricane. Bad night, topped off when US Immigration at SFO had gone home for the night. We never got an explanation.

On the other hand, my BOS==>SFO the flight was overbooked. I took the $1000 and free future tickets offer. They diverted a NY==>SFO flight to Boston and I was able to hop onto that - and arrived before my original flight did. It was very cheerful, almost empty, with the flight crew singing us across the country.

The very first flight I ever took was on ValuJet. I was trying to get to Orlando before my dad's semi-emergency cancer surgery. I have general anxiety and motion issues, so I was stressing (also a little hyped up after following my chiropractor's advice to load up on nose spray to help open my ears)... then the flight was delayed. GAAAAHHHHHHHH. The pilot came out and talked to everybody and said he had kids to put through college and he would NOT fly that plane if it didn't meet his specifications. That helped. Delay was nuts, like 3 or 4 hrs or something. Fortunately had Mr. Stranger and MIL to keep me amused (the good old days when people could wait with you for a flight).

There was a golf tournament in Orlando so the only flight I could get on short notice was to Tampa. Got there after midnight due to the delay, then had a 2-hour line at the car rental place. By this point it's like 1 or 2 in the morning, I hadn't eaten (for fear of barfing on the plane) and I was NOT in the mood when they tried to scam me into upgrading. The whole place (another 2 hrs' worth of line had piled up behind me) stopped chattering when I said I RESERVED A ____ AND IF YOU DON'T HAVE IT THAT'S NOT MY PROBLEM. (That was very unusual behavior for me at that time.) Miraculously he found keys for a vehicle in that class.

Mr. Stranger had alerted Mom to the flight delay, but nobody knew about the crush at the rental car counter. That was in the days before cell phones. There was a 45-minute wait for the pay phone. I decided to keep my place in the car line and just get there as fast as I could. Turned out the car rental company was showing that I had picked up the car hours earlier. I guess that's how they held the reservation past midnight? So the fam was worried. When I explained to them about the line for the phone, they agreed with my choice.

That's also the night I found out what an asshole Hulk Hogan was. Somebody else in the rental line had been on a flight with him and his posse, and she made sure everybody heard how awful they were. My opinion of him only went downhill from there.

Then I had a 2 hr drive ahead of me and had NFI how to get from the airport to the right highway. Thankfully a lady next to me in line was headed that way and waited around a few minutes so I could follow her. She, too, had a delayed flight, and knew she would need to pull off and take a nap. She got me started, then waved and pulled off. (Texas Lady in Tampa, if you ever see this, ❤️!)

Anywho, then it was just very tired, very hungry, very worried me, and dark open road. I drove way faster than was advisable for my alertness level and my familiarity with the vehicle I was in, but I just wanted to get. there. before I fell asleep! (I succeeded)

(speaking of falling asleep... I went to bed without finishing this post)

Dad's surgery was successful, I suppose, but his recovery was complicated.

6 weeks later, ValuJet crashed into the Everglades.

@Jay Bryant I'd suggest a train, but after @That Harp Guy's experience getting from TX to CO, in good conscience I can't. Seems they only have their shit together on the east coast, mostly the northeast.

Biden dropped the ball on some stuff but he was headed in the right direction with the trains, unlike anybody since... IDK, since Amtrak was born? probably longer

Travelling for work was always a bit of an ordeal because I am not comfortable travelling alone in the US by car and the locations I was going to were in Ag centers that required at least an hour driving. I'm mildly afraid of strangers. In the US in very aware people have hand guns and I'm not white although I don't look like a scary minority.

I was on a work trip to Clinton, Iowa when a push wind went through and closed the local (to Clinton) airport. I found out when I landed in Minneapolis. The agents tried routng me all over but could not get me close to Clinton without a long delay and next day arrival. This was before cell phone's, I didn't know the head office phone number and didn't have a corporate card yet. So I found a phone booth, made a collect call to my location, got connected to the travel department (that ceased to exist by 2015) and for a car rental. The luggage was pulled and left at a random gate, the car I got wasn't supposed to be there but was and I drove from Minneapolis to Clinton using my GPS that I had packed. I had to trust it because I had no maps and I had no idea how far it was, other than a day's drive. The drive was long but uneventful. The airport opened the day I was leaving and my luggage got delayed on the way home.

Well, there was the time a friend needed a favor because she had to deliver some paperwork to a client and couldn't because she had a looming deadline. So, I offered to do it for her. Ran home, got dressed more nicely, and in low heels.

Took a bus to the place, delivered the papers, no problem.

Then, I rang for the elevator. It came, and I was stepping forward to get in... when all the light went out. All over the building, the city, and a good chunk of the northeast. A few seconds earlier and I would have been stuck for days!

Meanwhile, I walked back down to the street. No traffic lights, random people directing traffic, and I walked home about 3 miles/nearly 5 km.

When I got home I had trouble getting in my apartment because there were no lights and I couldn't see the keyhole. I now carry a small flashlight on my keychain.

Later, my friend asked me to call her mom overseas (friend had a fancy cordless phone that had to be charged, mine was POTS) and tell her all was OK. She insisted on paying me back. I thought she was nuts until I got the bill. It was $50 for a few minutes!

Then we got ice while waiting for takeoff from DC National - after airborne we flew very low and slow and the pilot came back and looked out my window asking if I had seen any ice.

that gives me chills, having watched the aftermath of the Air Florida crash on live TV (yes, including the hypothermic flight attendant on an ice floe screaming for help while she thought she was swimming)

flight that crashed in 1982 near Washington (D.C.) National Airport

^{Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)}

@Deb Zaccaro-Rojas I was there in 1982/3. We “just” missed each other. Don’t tell me, the first Hebrew word you learned was “gingee!” OY

Not quite a transportation glitch, but I was flying to Israel from the UK so had to go back there and then on to Boston and then NY. Got horrid food poisoning from British turkey and had to fly back still sick. Some random customs person then made it her business to insist I open and unwrap all the gifts I’d. bought, just to make sure the jewelry wasn’t anything pricey. It was relatively inexpensive silver and Eilat stone earrings and a necklace. I was a fricking college student!

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Correction: it was snowiest day in November, not Saturday!

We're supposed to get a little on Monday/Tuesday, but nothing major.

Oh we're telling car travel stories too?

One year just before our annual trip from MD to FL we got new tires. The tire shop was an absolute clusterfuck. We almost didn't leave on time (and we're both ADHD so "on time" is already a moving target).

Mr. Stranger left a message for his co-worker/handyman to go ahead and do a repair they had been discussing while we were gone.

We were traveling with our chow mix, pit mix, and elderly GSD.

Got to FL, hung out with my parents for a couple of weeks. The end of the trip was near our anniversary so we took a river cruise. I got a sunburn.

Left a day or 2 later. We usually liked to go more than halfway (read: north of SC/NC border) before stopping for the night, but for whatever reason (probably late departure, knowing us) we stopped in northern SC. Hit the breakfast buffet the next morning then got moving.

A couple dozen miles into NC we were behind a tanker truck that seemed to be buffetting us with weird airflow. Then all of a sudden BAM! and we started fishtailing (in a conversion van). Mr. Stranger said we lost a tire. I thought he meant it blew. NOPE. He got us to the side of the road in one piece... and the entire driver's side rear wheel was gone. The denuded hub was sitting directly on the shoulder of the road. Unfortunately as the wheel departed, it flipped up (the "bam"), bending the crap out of the bumper and some other stuff, including the fill pipe for the gas tank—which some genius had decided to place directly above the muffler.

drip tss drip tss 😳

Ever seen the video where the cop was trying to drag some old lady out of her car with her seat belt still on? Panicked Mr. Stranger was doing that to me. GET OUT! GET OUT!!

So much for sitting my sunburned self in the shady van. The dogs and I were banished—good thing we were carrying folding chairs—up a nearby hill into the shade(?) of some pine trees to start making phone calls to get some help (which was an unfunny comedy of errors, and at the out-of-area regional cell phone rates that existed at that time, like 70 cents a minute) while Mr. Stranger did his best to reseat the fill tube, just inches off of I-95. Finally got connected to the right roadside assistance and their Canadian call center.

At some point a state trooper rolled up, then some fire trucks. NCSP had been southbound and saw the whole thing. Took him a while to reach a turnaround. He figured he'd find nothing but fuzz, guts & eyeballs, hence the fire truck. The FD checked to make sure the gas was not going to go up, then went on their way. The trooper sent another trooper to find our tire... all the way on the slow shoulder southbound 😳 (it actually almost hit the trooper who stopped with us). Trooper 2 propped it up so the tow truck driver could see it. Trooper 1 kept offering us (and the dogs) water, etc. Dude, we're loaded for a long trip lol, we're good. He had been on his way home from a weeklong deployment, and the tow truck was confirmed by then, so Mr. Stranger shooed him off to go home to his family.

Not 10 minutes later (long before the tow truck arrived), a station wagon absconded with our wheel. We honked and yelled to no avail.

Got a few check-in calls from the Canadian call center to update us on the tow truck. Just as it pulled up, a call came in from a different number. "Peggy" from Bangalore was calling to let me know this tow would use two credits, because a tire change was a separate claim. Guess they offshored the bad-news calls? And they make them just as the truck is pulling up so the disgruntled customer can't linger on the phone to object 😒

The driver was a first generation Chinese-American with a buttery SC drawl. Awesome dude. He said what he'd have to do was put the spare on (getting that out from under all our stuff through the bent rear doors was fun), back up to the back of the van, hook it the "wrong" way, then turn it around in traffic with the dogs in it and tow them that way til we got to the shop. 😳 I was too terrified to get in the truck for that maneuver, so I stood on the hill with my back to the road, covered my face and prayed I didn't hear a sickening crunch and lose my family. He didn't give me any crap about my fear, just worked around it. He pulled it off with no bloodshed! I hopped in the truck with him and Mr. Stranger and headed for whatever horrors awaited at a roadside shop 💰💰💰

The first candidate was right off the bottom of the first exit ramp. Unfortunately, he was elbows-deep in another traveler's blown head gasket, and it was so late in the day he wouldn't have time to work on ours. We drove past another place that had already closed. Then we drove... and drove... and he pulled into a place with a pockmarked gravel parking lot that almost made me hear banjo music.

The guy had been about to lock up, but when he heard our story (did I mention the tow truck driver was a mensch?), he wanted to help.

I pulled out the folding chair again and camped outside the office door with the dogs while he and Mr. Stranger pulled the van into the shop and started banging on it. At some point he spotted me sitting outside and more or less ordered me to get myself and the dogs inside the office.

Dogs, dude, are you sure? I go where they go.

👉

🤷‍♀️🫡

The floor was so covered with gravel dust that the black GSD ended up gray. Decor consisted of various plaques on the walls... and a fish tank covered with a bear skin. Chairs were comfy tho.

Sitting there with not much to do, I was reading the various plaques and signs. Then I came to the one that said they don't take cards. Oh fuck. Mr. Stranger flitted in and out a few times giving me "updates", but didn't let me get a word in edgewise before disappearing. Finally one time I had to YELL at him to get him to stop, then told him not to run up too much of a tab because of the card thing.

They secured the fill pipe as best they could, got the bumper corner back down into the same zip code with the rest of the bumper, got the doors where they could mostly be opened, and duct taped the split body seam that was exposing insulation. He also gave us an emergency spare. He didn't want to take any money, but we fished out our mad-money Benjamin and insisted. It was his daughter's birthday (that's where he'd been headed), so he said he'd take her out to dinner with it. 👍

The ride home was... testy. We reeked of gas. The thunderstorm in Virginia didn't help. I almost got out and started walking at one point.

Didn't get home til after midnight. Friday's was the only thing open, so we got takeout (we hadn't eaten since breakfast). I got about half of mine down, but I was falling asleep in it so I gave up and went to bed.

I slept like the dead.

After dawn, my bladder could wait no longer. Rose from bed, turned the corner to the bathroom, and... neatly lined up across the threshold of my bathroom door were 6 stairstep kittens

WE DID NOT HAVE A CAT

Mr. Stranger had sacked out on the couch. He was awakened to my screaming.

The kittens absconded in the direction of the repair that was supposed to have been done while we were gone (spoiler: it wasn't) under our bathtub.

Mr. Stranger coaxed them all out from under the tub and put them in a box, with the hissy runt coming last. I hurried out for supplies.

Cat rescues laughed and/or hung up on me when I called for help. (Do not stick your hand out to me for money, ever!) One rescue supposedly managed the TNR in our neighborhood. They said the mother would not have another litter that year.

WRONG

(the TNR group was also unaware of her existence, despite several neighbors having her families under their homes over the years)

She once again had them under my house—but a colony of yellow jackets had moved in by then, so she took the new litter elsewhere.

We ended up raising the first litter.

Insurance later totalled the van.
We drove a totalled vehicle 400 miles
the older I get, the more I wish I had bought that van back from the insurance company

to this day, we don't know why the wheel came off... but with all 5 lugs intact, it seems like it had to be loose(ened) lug nuts

one would think if it was the tire place that left them loose, it would have come off long before the return trip

I happened to pull up the map of where we stayed—turned out the place next door (the same side where we parked) was some kind of post-prison rehab or some such 🤨 not sure why somebody would want a dull wheel off of an 80s conversion van tho 🤷‍♀️

anywho... 3 months later, my mother fell and broke her hip
in the middle of the then-worst Florida hurricane season in living memory

drove back down in our replacement vehicle... which broke an air intake or some such while I was driving Mr. Stranger to his (delayed by a hurricane) flight home

took it to a dealer (mistake)
got shafted for $1200+

that was not a good year
but its record would only stand for 7 years...