cww.blog!

Flying isn't what it used to be. The glamour of hopping on the Concorde to arrive in New York before you left Paris, the jovial types on the Pan Am to Sydney, the Eastern Airlines 747 that took you to London at an hour's notice... these things just don't exist anymore, and neither does the surrounding culture that made air travel the bastion of a thriving society.

I'll bet you know what's coming now, don't you? If you guessed another airline mess, possibly involving Washington, D.C., you'd be quite correct. But, at least it wasn't United this time.

My US Airways flight was supposed to leave Pittsburgh at 3:30, but when I glanced for the first time at a "departures" monitor, I noticed my flight was cancelled. That's right... not delayed, but cancelled. Maybe it was the weather in Boston; my dad's flight was delayed in Houston because of that, but even now, I have no idea why my flight was cancelled.

So, they transferred everyone on the flight to the next flight to New York Laguardia, which was due to leave at 3:55, a scant 25 minutes after the Boston flight. OK, that's cool, I said, and I waited.

We were eventually told the crew on the Laguardia flight was en route from Philadelphia, but there was weather there, so they would be late. So, I waited some more. Then, we were told the connecting flight to Boston would be held for our arrival in New York. That's lovely for us but not so much for the people already in New York. And, I waited.

A while later, around 5:15, a distressed employee engaged the public announcement system and told us Boston passengers to hop on over to another gate and board a flight to Washington Reagan National Airport. So, we did that, and we went to Washington.

Upon landing at Reagan and arriving at gate 40, we Boston passengers hurried about 50 feet across the hall to gate 45, where our flight to Boston was waiting. I arrived at the gate first and boarded the plane, having spent a grand total of about 55 seconds in the terminal — the shortest lay-over ever.

I landed in Boston, safe and sound, and my dad and I followed Route 1 up toward Newbury, grabbed some very garlicky Greek food on the way, and arrived here on the island around 10:30, about four hours later than I originally anticipated.

It's breezy and cool but a bit humid here. The breeze and temperature are a nice change from Pittsburgh, where it has been mostly warm and stale. I'll get back to that on Monday. Meanwhile, I must attend to family and drink lots of coffee.

I'm not really bitter about the flight thing this time, as the wait was comfortable and air conditioned, and I still got to Boston with some time left over to have dinner and chat with my dad and my aunt. I just hope the return flight is somewhat less terrible and somewhat more non-stop.