Don’t Travel With Me

[disalarming]

I travel a lot. I fly back and forth between school and home during the academic year, and I’ve grown up in a jet-set type of lifestyle because I have family and friends all over the world. I am generally a good person to have around when traveling via airplane because I am the most experienced with that form of travel as opposed to cars, trains, etc. However, when flying to my school’s city yesterday, this belief of mine was proven wrong.

First, my flight was delayed, which wasn’t really a surprise as it’s not unusual for flight delays to occur in the winter due to weather. However, this delay actually wasn’t anything weather-related. It was caused by a broken lavatory on the plane, and one of the flight attendants informed all passengers that if they couldn’t fix the toilet, we’d have to be moved to another aircraft. I’ve never had a flight delayed because of indoor plumbing, but luckily, they fixed the toilet without major disruptions.

Next, I was at the baggage claim waiting to get my suitcase. Not even ten seconds after I arrived at the carousel, the carousel broke down and all of the luggage had to be shifted to a nearby carousel before any passengers could claim their suitcases. By the time the switch took place, three full flights were assigned the same carousel and claiming luggage was an absolute mess.

Last, I was taking the Metro to get from the airport to my school. After I got on the train, the doors open and shut no less than twelve times before the train was able to be fully operational and depart the station. When I was transferring train lines, all of the up escalators had broken down (the down ones were working just fine, however). I had to loop all the way around the platform with my gigantic heavy suitcase in tow before I could locate the elevator, and by some miracle, it was working, so I managed to get to the upper platform for my connecting train.

Thank God there were no mechanical issues with the shuttle I had to take from the Metro station in order to get to my campus. If there had been, I think I would have just about given up getting back to school in one piece!

Long story short: don’t travel with me. I seem to leave a trail of mechanical failures wherever I go!

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.