On the road again...

Sunday morning I got up bright and early, all ready for yet another adventure filled trip to Hong Kong and Shenzhen. My flight was to leave at noon, so I arrived at the airport around 10:30pm.

We boarded the flight on time and began our taxi to the runway. My turnaround time in Newark, NJ was only about an hour, so in short order, I'd be on the looong flight to Hong Kong. My iPod was loaded, I had a new plug which will allow me to use my laptop on the plane to watch DVDs, and I'd made sure to make one final, restful bathroom break before I'd left the house. (Not long into the 16 hour flight to HK, the bathrooms on the plane begin looking like footage from the Superdome during Hurricane Katrina...)

I was in the second row on the flight, so before they shut the cockpit door, I'd noticed that the co-pilot was a young, relatively attractive, woman. "Hmm," I said to myself, "It's nice that we let them vote AND fly airplanes now." (Just kidding...Put down your large rocks...) As we began to taxi, the pilot came on and welcomed us. Apparently both pilots were women. I imagined the cockpit, all of the equipment covered in spilled soft drinks and Cheerios ground into the carpet. I also hoped that nobody was in the way of the rather large aircraft driving across the airport, lest the pilots be applying makeup while taxiing. (I kid, I tell you.)

Anyway, we reached the end of the runway, and then I heard the engines stop. Never a good sign. "Ladies and gentlemen, there's bad weather in Newark, so we're going to be delayed 15 minutes." No sweat.

At this point, the co-pilot bursts through the door, running to the lavatory. She literally was saying, "Gotta go...gotta go...gotta go..." as she shuffled along. This didn't help her cause for female pilots. When she returned, the captain did the same maneuver. My only surprise was that they didn't go as a pair and return with fresh lipstick. (Yes, I know. I'm going to get a beating for this one.)

15 minutes elapsed. Same announcement, except now it's 45 minutes due to traffic backed up during the storm, which has now passed. Sigh. Oh well, I have my iPod and they left the air conditioning on. No problem.

45 minutes elapsed. "Now they're telling us another hour. We'll keep you posted."

60 more minutes elapsed. "We've decided to take you back to the gate, since you may have missed your connections."

Sure enough. The flight to Hong Kong was already boarding, and we were still sitting in Indy. To make matters worse, there was a certain NASCAR race in Indy on Sunday, so all the outbound flights on Monday were booked. They offered to let us wait, fly to Newark, spend the night, and fly to Hong Kong on Monday afternoon. This would have stunk, but might have worked. The hangup was that for business, we would need to extend our return a bit in this scenario, but there were no return flights until August 21.

So I took my ticket voucher and headed home. Amazingly, my two hours sitting on the runway, STILL left me smelling like I'd been flying all day. That travel stink is amazingly potent. In any case, I'm going to make a second attempt on Tuesday via Japan. I'll keep everyone posted. I'm due to arrive in Hong Kong late Wednesday, which means another delightful, late night border crossing, no doubt.