Thursday, April 30, 2009

Thanks American Airlines pilot for saving my life...but the rest of you AAssholes can go to hell

I know I haven't written for awhile and I'd like to say it's because I hurt my hand and could only type with my left hand but that only happened like a month ago and it was better like 2 weeks ago so I really have no excuse. I just didn't feel like writing. Until....RIGHT NOW!!

The main inspiration for the surge was our trip to Florida last week. We live in California so the flight is never easy but this one was the greatest pain in the ass so far - mainly cause we all almost died. I should explain who "we" is. It's me, my husband Mike and our fabulous traveling pup: Pocky. She's been traveling with us from a month after we got her and she's awesome at it. She stays with us in the cabin in her carrier by my feet. She's awesome, she goes thru security like a champ, chills in her carrier and doesn't make a peep. And trust me when I say...she has been thru A LOT when it comes to planes. She waited in line once at the Phoenix airport for 6 hours with us in her carrier AFTER she'd already been thru a 2 hour plane ride. She's well worth the $200 (yes 200 US dollars) the airlines make us pay to jam her under the seat in front of us. But that is another bloggie entirely.

This one is about almost dying. So our flight to Tampa with a stop in Dallas was smooth as silk (shocking for us) so smooth in fact that we should have know what would await us on the back end. Fast forward a week of fun in the sun and we are packed up and ready to take off and head back home. Everything is going good and then about 45 minutes into the flight the pilot comes on and says that we are having troubles with the fuel pump and he is having us land in Tallahassee as a precaution. So I feel a little nervous but ok-not so bad so far. 15 minutes later he comes back with a decidedly different tone to his voice and says that we will be landing as soon as they can get this hunk of metal close enough to the ground. Now I'm getting nervous....cause you know I can picture the scattered plane parts in the swamp and my mom sifting thru remains trying to identify my shit. It's bad. So they get the plane on the ground and as we all can't help but notice the firetrucks and guys in shiny silver pants waiting for us to burst into flames, the pilot comes on for a last time to tell us we got on the ground with about a minute to spare before we would have been on the ground anyway but not by choice.

So we get off the plane and take a look at the Tallahassee airport. Which I would say is small but that is really an exaggeration. You can walk from one end to the other in about 12 steps. So, having been thru this many times Mike runs off the plane and gets in line. We don't know what will happen but he knows that being in line is always a good thing. We wait for a while watching the clock as the flight we were supposed catch in Dallas draws closer and closer. They aren't telling us anything and apparently they have 3 people that work in the airport but they are doing the best they can. So the chick in front of us gets on the phone and ends up finding another flight out of there and makes some round about plans to get herself home. So we do the same and end up getting a flight to Miami and then a direct flight to SFO getting us in at 10:30 PM. Ok- not so bad...it means we will have been traveling for almost 24 hours with the time change but oh well you gotta do what you gotta do to get home.
So we get on the TEENY plane from Tallahassee to Miami knowing full well that we should just kiss our luggage goodbye (since the guy wrote which bags were ours on a scrap of paper). We pull away from the gate and the pilot gets on the horn and tells us that the plane has had an electrical fail and he needs to "ctrl, alt, delete it"

Join us tomorrow for the stunning conclusion of: "Hell with Wings: The Florida Saga"