And That’s How John McCain Lost My Vote

I enjoy traveling for work, but sometimes the actual travel portion of the trip can be a real pain in the rear. I went to Canada last week, and the flights in both directions made me so grateful to be home. For the first leg of the way out, I was seated between a large man who kept trying to read my book and a woman with a screaming infant. And when the infant wasn’t screaming, her two toddler brothers across the aisle were. As we were landing, one boy kept yelling “There’s an airplane!” every time he saw one. Which happened a lot, since we were AT AN AIRPORT. I really wanted to grab the dad and tell him to shut the kid up. But I didn’t.

On the way back, all the drama happened in Minneapolis during the layover. First, the plane was about 20 minutes late. No biggie. When the plane landed, we were told they’d get everyone off, clean the plane, and get us loaded; it would be about 15 minutes. Nearly 15 minutes later, we were told they’d decided to change a couple of tires first, and that we’d be boarding in about 15 minutes. Then there was a mechanical problem; it’d be about 15 minutes. Then they found the problem – a switch in the cockpit that starts the engines – and they were working on it; we’d board in about 15 minutes. And then we did board. And the pilot came over the intercom and said they couldn’t fix the switch, they had to replace it; it’d be about 15 minutes. Then we were told that the route the maintenance guys would normally take around the airport to get from the supply building back to us had been blocked by a VIP taking off – he couldn’t tell us who, but he could say it was a presidential candidate – so it would be another 15 minutes. They finally got the part to the plane and managed to replace it. Then the pilot announced that they were calling around the airport because the ground crew had disappeared and we needed someone to move the jet bridge and back us away from the gate; it’d be about 15 minutes. We finally took off a bit more than 2 hours late. Thankfully, the grinding noise coming from the engine on my side of the plane stopped when we hit cruising altitude...