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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:

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Image by pdxmac