Escapade

This is not Guangzhou. I have departed that place of rain, to seek something better, or so I thought. Little did I know exactly how difficult my journey would be, the tests that I would face.

Thursday night (GZ time) I still had plans to go to Phoenix this weekend. I would fly from GZ to Tokyo to Portland to Phoenix, arriving around 4pm on Saturday. I hd the thought, "why fly to Phoenix, when I can spend Saturday night in Minneapolis?" After all, it is my home, and I have many friends and important people I would like to see there, like Kelsey. So I changed my flight. The travel agent told me that unfortunatly ALL the Tokyo to Mpls flights for Saturday were sold out, but there was a Friday available. SOLD! And the packing began. As this was less than 12 hours from said flight, I hustled. So excited, I could hardly sleep, managing only 3 hours of shuteye. Up and at 'em at 5am, to make it to the airport with plenty of time, no chances taken here. The flight crew arrive and board... hmm... 15 minutes later, all the flight crew disembark. This is not encouraging. Right, the pilot tells us that it's a broken plane. NOT GOOD. NWA only flighs one flight out of GZ each day, and this was it.

NWA's local representation did a less than stellar job of handling the situation. I won't go into it here, for fear of throwing my computer across the room just thinking about it. Needless to say, I was forced to find my own way back to the states, and damnit, I don't care what it takes! So that led me to a 9pm (after arriving at the airport at 6:30am) flight on China Southern to LAX. Fortunately it landed two hours early, so I cought a 9pm (Pacific) to Las Vegas, and a 11:00 to MSP, landing at 3:45 am, Central Daylight Time. Total travel time: just about 36 hours. Not fun. One benefit is I made a few friends on the flight, who were all in the same situation as me, and ended up on the same flights back. So that was cool.

In the end, I made it home, and really surprised Kelsey. It felt great to just sit in my own house again. I was even able to make it out to the bar on Saturday night, surprise a couple more people, and have a birthday drink at midnight. Unfortunately, as soon as I landed in Minneapolis, I pretty much had to leave for Phoenix and a 4 day work conference. But then it's a week at home, a new fence to install, and a wedding to attend.