O lord, kumbaya.

Alright. For your reading pleasure, this is my exciting holiday travel tale. It's not so exciting to me after living it and then retelling it a million times to friends and family over the holidays, but..whatevs.

I flew out of Tucson on the afternoon of December 21. We were about an hour late leaving, and I only had 1.5 hours for my layover so I was a wee bit nervous. Never fear! The Delta Gods of Delays are here! Our pilot made up some time in the air and I was finally in the terminal in Hartsfield around 7PM, with a scheduled departure of 8:04 PM to Wisconsin. I hauled through the terminal to get to the bathroom, fill up my water bottle, grab dinner, etc. and made it with plenty of time to spare, since my next flight kept getting bumped back 15 minutes every 20 minutes or so.

We finally boarded around 8:45 and then promptly sat around for awhile. The pilots decided since the weather was sketchy in Wisconsin, they needed some extra fuel in case we needed to circle or be diverted. In comes the fuel truck, which loaded us up with 500 pounds of fuel, instead of the requested 100 pounds. Haha. Funny. The plane was then overweight, so they asked some standby passengers to get off and began pulling bags at random from the hold. You can imagine how excited people were to hear that their bags might not reach Madison, but they'd be able to file a claim and have them delivered. Eventually.

So after the weight fiasco, we finally begin taxiing away from the gate. Once we're on a runway, we sit there for another 30 minutes or so. The flight attendant finally explains that there is a mechanical issue. As it turned out, one of the hydraulic pumps in the first engine was not working. So the pilots decide we better get this fixed before we take off and they head back to the gate.

The mechanics come and fix it and everyone is happy and ready to go, but no. Now, because we burned some fuel waiting out on the runway, we're low again. So they called the fuel truck to refuel us (AGAIN. FOR THE SECOND TIME. THIRD IF YOU COUNT THE INITIAL UNDERFUELING.). After it pulled away, we were still sitting there when a voice came over the loudspeaker and said "Because of the weather, this flight is canceled..." Haha. I just spent 2.5 hours on a plane (close to the entire flight time, actually) and now the flight is canceled? Great!

Before we left the plane, the flight attendant noted that if our bags were not on the carousel, we needed to file a service claim to have them delivered to Madison. I stopped at the carousel first and only found one of my bags, but more were still coming off the conveyor belt, so I decided to get in line to be rebooked and then check again later.

I waited in line for about 45 minutes before reaching a really nice gate agent who had a tremendously cheerful outlook for someone who had been dealing with irate and cranky people all evening. She clicked away on her computer and told me she could get me to Madison on the 23rd.

You know, 2 days after I left my house in Tucson. I told her that wouldn't do, but could she fly me to Milwaukee? She booked me a flight for noon the next day (it was now close to 1 AM) and gave me a voucher for a hotel and crappy airport food, etc. She also gave me the overnight kit featuring the t-shirt you see pictured below.

I headed back to the baggage claim to see if the suitcase with, oh, half my wardrobe had appeared. It had not. I wandered around all the carousels to make sure it wasn't hanging out and then headed to the long line to file a service claim. I greeted the agent cheerfully and explained that I thought my bag was probably pulled, but couldn't know for sure, and could she please use this pretty sticker with a barcode to tell me where it was? No. No, she could not. My bag was going to Madison, she said, and I couldn't file anything until I got to Madison. I explained that I was no longer flying into Madison, but Milwaukee. She asked me if I'd be going to Madison eventually anyway and I said yeah, of course. She then explained that instead of letting me file a service claim in Atlanta and having my bag delivered to me IN MADISON, I would have to make a separate trip to the airport to file the claim and/or pick it up. I then explained to her that this made no sense; if I had made it to Madison that night like planned, and my bag hadn't been present, it would be in my hot little hands the next morning at the latest. Now, because I was rerouted to Milwaukee, she expected me to fly in there, drive to Madison, and make a trip to MSN to see if maybe possibly my bag was there?

My breaking point was when she told me that the barcodes on the stickers didn't mean anything and that they didn't have a tracking system like that. Oh, travel tears. I love you so.

Anyway, I made it without incident to my hotel and got a scary outdoor room that permitted me a few hours of fitful sleep. When I woke in the morning, I got some breakfast and then started making calls to see who could pick me up in Milwaukee, and to cancel both my hair and dental appointments for that day. Kristin graciously offered to go to Milwaukee to get me. We ended up departing over an hour late from Atlanta, but I did eventually make it to the land of cheese and beer. When I headed to the airport later that evening, my bag was waiting for me at the Delta service counter, which I was pretty glad for. I picked up dinner for my dad and I and headed home to sleep, which amounted to something like 12 very blissful hours.