Raleigh, NC
We headed to Raleigh to do some filming this week. It was scheduled to be another routine location shoot... Renting lights, audio, teleprompter, etc. Actually, the shoot itself went really well. It was the flights that were nightmarish.
I woke up at 5am on Tuesday morning--plenty of time to get ready, and swing by to pick pdxmac up at his place. We got to the airport at around 7am, parked, and headed to the ticket counter. The travel department where we work had set us up on American Airlines, so we headed to our gate, a little groggy but ready for the trip. We boarded the flight (Alaska MVP status got us on quickly,) and took our seats... And that's where we stayed for the next two hours. There was bad weather in Dallas, so flights heading to Dallas were being grounded until the weather cleared up. I closed my eyes and got a little sleep until we were allowed to pull away from the gate and wait our turn to take off. After a half hour of waiting to take off, the pilot informed us that the flight had been canceled. Damnit.
We called our travel department, and they got us set up on a United Flight leaving later that morning (and routed through Chicago, not Dallas.) No big deal--except we had to go collect our checked baggage and re-check it on United. We did so, and went to the gate to wait for our flight. That flight was delayed by an hour, but it eventually took off for Chicago. It was a full flight, and I was in a middle seat near the back. The young woman sitting next to me was pleasant to talk to, so the flight went by pretty quickly. Turns out she works with the Army Chaplain services over in Germany, and she was headed back there after visiting her family here in Portland.
We arrived in Chicago to find that our flight to Raleigh had also been delayed--and for good reason:
Image by pdxmac
If it's hard to read, it says "Delay reason: Aircraft Delayed"... No kidding?
We finally boarded, an hour and a half later, and made it safely to Raleigh.
When travel canceled our American Airline reservations, they accidentally canceled our hotel reservations as well. Unfortunately, the hotel we were originally planning to stay in was overbooked, so we had to grab a room at a hotel near the airport. It was actually a pretty decent room, but a ways from where we were going to be filming the next day (our original hotel was right across the street from the filming location.)
Filming the next day went really well, and afterwards, we headed to a great restaurant in downtown Raleigh for dinner (I wish I could remember the name of the restaurant, but it is slipping my mind at the moment.) We passed an Irish pub called "Napper Tandy's" on the way to dinner, so naturally we had to head there after we ate for a Guinness.
The next morning, I missed the airport shuttle by about 30 seconds... Managed to catch the next one though, and got to the gate with a full 10 minutes to spare. Boarded and took off without a hitch. I had another middle seat, but I was so tired, I just passed out. pdxmac snapped a great picture of me--practically drooling on the poor woman next to me.
image by pdxmac
Back in Chicago, we discovered that United had overbooked the flight to Portland. They were offering a free round-trip ticket for those who volunteered to give up their seats for a later flight. Sounded good to me, so I volunteered. They put me up in a (scary) hotel, gave me a voucher for a free round-trip ticket, and booked me in First Class for tomorrow morning's flight to Portland.
Now I'm just waiting for my cousin, who lives in Chicago, to get here so we can go grab some dinner and a beer or two.
I fly quite a bit for work, and this has been the most difficult one to date. I'd say that's pretty good. I mean, 3-4 years of flying an average of once a month, and this is the only bad trip? Can't complain... But it's fun to share the story. I'm guessing there are a lot of stories stemming from the canceled Dallas flights on Tuesday. I'll update the post tomorrow when I'm back in Portland--just in case anything else interesting happens.
Blogged with Flock
Tags: travel, raleigh, north carolina, united airlines, american airlines, chicago, dallas, airlines, hotel, canceled, delayed, trip, photos