Yes, I am back from my trip to Las Vegas. I would have written about it sooner, but have been sleeping a lot... it takes a long time to recover from being awake for over thirty hours straight!
The plan was to get some sleep Tuesday after arriving home at 10:30 AM, but we didn't get home at 10:30. We got home at 4:30 PM, and by then we absolutely had to eat before crashing.
What happened, you ask? Well, apparently United Airlines thought it would be entirely too convenient for us to have both a smooth trip to Vegas and a smooth trip back. We had an overnight flight from Vegas to Dulles Airport in Washington, DC, which was uneventful. But while waiting for our connecting flight home, we were told there would be a delay due to a mechanical problem on the plane. A half hour later they announced they were still working on it, and in another thirty minutes they decided the plane was not safe to fly. They had another plane and were sending us to another gate.
The new gate was on the G concourse, and we were on C. At Dulles, this means you have to take a bus all the way across the airport. When we arrived there, the gate agent announced that the plane was on the ground and they were getting it ready for boarding. We noticed the flight status on the monitor by the gate was flashing between "gate change" and "departed", but knowing those things are erroneously programmed all the time we assumed it was nothing more than that. This was confirmed when the gate agent came back on the intercom to tell us not to worry about the sign, and that it would be updated shortly. Not two minutes later, she picked up the microphone again to say the flight had been cancelled.
That was it. After they told us they had a new plane and after they sent us all the way across the airport, they cancelled the flight. With no explanation whatsoever.
The original flight had been scheduled to depart at 8:50 AM. We managed to get rebooked on a 1:00 PM flight to Philadelphia, with a 3:15 PM connection to Providence (the airport is not really in Providence, dammit!). And the best part? Our new flight was departing from the C concourse. Back where we started.
Thankfully, the rest of the trip home was uneventful. Our checked baggage actually got put on an earlier direct flight home, so it was already waiting for us in the baggage claim office... no long wait at the carousel. We had used long-term valet parking, so from there it was just a hop on a shuttle straight to the car, which was already up front, open and waiting.
I will get photos online and write about the rest of the trip within the next couple of days.
![[photo of me]](/glasses144.jpg)
![[album thumbnail]](/photos/halloween2008/thumbnails/albumthumb.jpg)
![[album thumbnail]](/photos/redsox2008/thumbnails/albumthumb.jpg)
