Life on the Road is never without complications

This morning was too early, after too late a night not being able to fall asleep. But I dragged myself up, took a shower and proceeded to get a couple hundred miles, and an equal number of pounds of salt, on my car before turning into the airport at Tri-Cities, TN. Sooooo... when this master plot came to me, it seemed "logical" (a nice word, that really seems so distant from my real feelings now, which is more like stupid). Have some meetings with Lee, shoot over to the airport in Johnson City, fly to Cleveland, teach a class on Wednesday morning and then come home... Simple, right?

So the first part really did go well, other than it being really, really cold in Mitchell County. I finished up in Johnson City around 1:30 so IF I had been thinking, I would have gotten probably all the way to Greensboro before I could have found a flight that would get me to Cleveland in a timely fashion and not have so far to drive back tomorrow. But noooooooo... Mr. Smartie Pants (a factious name I call myself, just like Doe, a deer, a female deer) had to just go to the airport and do some work. I could kick myself. I'll get Drew to build me a kicking-myself machine. We'll make millions.

The flight from Tri-Cities to Charlotte was supposed to leave at 5:35. At 5:10, it was announced it wouldn't get there until 6:40 pm "at the earliest" and that meant I would not make my connector to Cleveland. (According to the helpful Orbitz text messages, it didn't leave TN until around 8 pm...) So they rebooked me. OK, for the naïve, traveling through Charlotte is usually bad. Only two places are consistently worse: O'Hare and Atlanta. So I was sent over to the Delta counter to pick up my replacement tickets. I hate ATL. Hate. Nuclear accident hate.

By the time I got there, went to three different gates (and following the other sheep as they moved us around for shits and giggles), and we left Hell around 9:30 (supposed to leave by 9 pm), finally arriving in Cleveland at 11:30. Airbridge? No. What a stupid question. So it was snowing a bit, the cold wind coming off the lake (hence lake-effect snows, which means lots, and lots, and lots of snow since water evaporation + cold air = snow, wintry mix, ice, and pretty much everything that makes towns and cities in the South shut down.

Get in taxi. Nice guy. Trying even harder to be nice. "So, Mister. Good flight?"