Oy.

Night 1 will be spent in Philadelphia, or wherever Nick Purifico lives. My Boston to Philly flight, orginally scheduled to leave at 2:30 PM finally boarded around 6:20 PM. We probably took off around 7PM after an extended boarding process and everyone was already crabby. I did a little reading and then fell asleep (or came close to falling asleep) as we took off. After a couple minutes of eyes closed, I decided to try out the DVD capabilities of the new laptop by watching Clerks 2. 36 minutes into the movie (somewhat lackluster so far in my opinion) we were beginning our descent. We touched down around 8:20 PM and in announcing the connecting gates, the flight lady said that San Francisco would be leaving from B3, the very same gate that was on my ticket. I immediately felt a surge of hope that maybe the flight was still there and readied myself to get off the plane. Unfortunately, we sat in that plane on the runway for over an hour, including an excruciating 15 minutes where we were less than 50 feet from the gate but no one was available to "park us", In other words, after sitting on the runway for 45 minutes, US Air, in all their infinite wisdom, decided against having a doofus with an orange wand available to greet our flight. The captain went so far as to suggest that everyone open their US Air magazine to get the e-mail address of customer relations in order to complain.

Eventually we got off the plane, and lo and behold, there was no San Francisco departure remaining for that night. Whether the SF plane was available when we first landed or whether the plane was long gone before we even began our descent, I may never know, but this experience has soured an already sour opinion of US Air in particular and the airline industry in general.

I have no idea what tonight will hold. The time is now 10:20PM and I am waiting for a ride from a person that enrolled at Delaware 2 years after I graduated. I haven't eaten dinner...

UPDATE 2:30AM:

I just got back from the Bryn Mawr Pub with Nick and am settling in for bed. Nick really hooked me up tonight: ride from the airport, he hadn't eaten dinner so we went to some diner that could have been in the middle of Arkansas, I get a bed to sleep in, and we went down the street to a little dive type pub and I got to have some Yuenglings. Things on this trip are looking up!!

I am bummed to be missing the Toranado barleywine fest with Dave tomorrow, but I figure things are happening for a reason and this was a fun night (once on the groun in Philly). To tell you the truth I am not even sure where I am, but I know I am near Villanova, Bryn Mawr and Haverford, so check a map.

Tomorrow I have (at least I hope I have!) a flight at 5:30 PM from Philly to San Fran. If all goes as planned I'll get to hang out with Dave and Alli and all this excessive time traveling from Boston to San Francisco will be forgotten.