This was a rant posted by my friend Glen. He and his wife were heading to Texas (from Florida) for a weekend event in our medieval group (www.amgtard.com) called Spring War. They had been looking forward to this event for months.

Just thought it good for a laugh. He made me laugh out loud!

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Let's see, my First Spring War definately did not meet the billing.

* Took Thursday off soe we could jet out to Spring War. Lily, beiing apparently indespensible to the smooth running of Bell south engineering, has to go into work until 3:30pm.; She gets off, and we drive off to Jacksonville Airport.

* Arriving in Jacksonville we see that every flight is delayed at least two hours except ours. Sweetness.

* Upon reaching the departure time of our flight, we are informed that our flight is delayed too. They're just too retarded to post that.

* Flight is REALLY delayed. No cause given. Some Delta Airlines drone mutters about "the weather in Atlanta". Weather.com says it is sunny and clear in Atlanta.

* We arrive in Atlanta at 10:30pm and sprint across two concourses to make our connecting flight. Lily has asthma attack and falls behind, "It's too late for me. You go on without me."

* Glen arrives at the gate and finds out that plane is "closed". Reasoned requests, bribes and begging fail to move plane back to "open". Insults, extremely loud yelling, and flat-out swearing also fail, but are more satisfying. Lacking any sort of weapon, Glen does not murder the drone. Lily finally arrives at the gate to inform Glen that he has her inhaler. Lily almost dies but manages to resume breathing.

* Glen is informed by Delta Gate Attendant drone that there are "no hotels in Atlanta." Glen asks to speak to his supervisor, and is informed that Gate drone has no supervisor. Glen calls gate drone a liar, things degenerate from there.

* Glen moves on to the Delta Cusomter Raping... er, "Service" desk. Stands in line behind 100 other people who have missed flights. More people get in line. Line slowly grows to clog alarge section of the concourse.

* Glen is issued a razor blade by a Delta Customer Service drone. Drone then tells Glen that he can fly "on standby" on a morning flight. Glen is #40 on the "standby list". Lily does not make list. Plane is fully booked, and everyone on it has already checked in and confirmed. Glen does not murder drone with his new weapon, because he's too stunned that they would go to so much effort to piss him off after arming him.

* Glen talks to a customer service rep on the phone, who tells him that there are no hotels in Atlanta. Drone then tells him the next flight he can actually get a seat on to anywhere in Texas will be leaving on Monday. Drone says, "Yes" when Glen asks if he is expected to spend four days in the airport. Glen asks to speak to drone's supervisor. Drone says she has no supervisor. Glen yells at drone.

* Lily has another asthma attack.

* Glen manages to find an actual supervisor after waiting in another long line. Glen attempts to get a hotel and a new flight. Supervisor yells at Lily, apparently for daring to have an asthma attack in the airport. Airport supervisor learns that a person should never yell at Glen's wife. Oddly, security does not show up.

* Airport supervisor decides that Glen and Lily should have a refund.

* Glen and Lily split up. glen goes to (surprise) stand in line to get their luggage, Lily goes to rent a car. They have decided to fricking drive.

* Very loud, very plentiful emergency sirens go off, declaring that an emergency has occured and that everyone should remain calm.

* Glen spends 30 minutes in line to discover that he was directed to the "lost your luggage yesterday" line instead of the "lost your luggage today" lilne. glen boggles that Delta screws this up so often that they have seperate (long) lines for different days.

* Sirens continue to go off. Glen waits in new line. Lily arrives to inform Glen that there are no cars available in the airport. Apparently enough people got stranded earlier in the day by Delta that they rented every car in the airport.

* Glen decides to take a fricking cab. Glen calls' Yellow Cab. They're closed. WTF? Apparently, Atlanta cab companies close by 1:30am.

* After some thought, Glen decides to take a fricking limo. Glen does a 411 and calls a limosine company. They're closed to. 411 only locates one limosine company in Atlanta. WTF?

* Glen gets to the front of the baggage line and is told that his luggage can't be retrieved, because the people who work in baggage handling went home while he waited in line. Despite the fact that his luggage is less than 500 feet away, he can't have it and it will be flown (without him) to San antonio first thing in the morning.

* Glen flips out. Lily takes his razor away.

* Glen gives up and has Lily calls Squeak. Squeak does not flip out and kill them for calling her at 2am. Neither does Brad. Squeak comes and picks them up for "Spring War at Squeaks".

* "Spring War At Squeaks" does not have a lit ditch field, does have hippies, only has organic food. Also, Glen does not have clean underpants. On the bright side, it does have Squeak and jam.

* The next day, in a quest for clean underpants, Squeak drops Lily and Glen off at the Hootchie-momma part of town while she goes into school. Lily discovers that she hates hootchie-momma clothes.

* Glen goes to GA Tech and discovers that their grad school is way cooler than UF's. He feels gyped. Bigtime. Also, Squeak's office is cooler than his.

* Later that Afternoon, Glen and Lily finally get to a real mall. New clothes are bought and changed into immediately. Morale improves.


* Lily and Glen hitch a ride with Khazon back to Gainesville late Saturday.

* A midnight, Sunday, Glen and Lily's luggage is delivered to their house. Luggage brags about the great time it had at Spring War.

All in all, not what I'd planned on this weekend. Squeak salvaged the weekend though. Thanks, Squeak!

Totally priceless non-trip report. Can hardly catch my breath because I'm laughing so hard.

Excellent, so graphic almost felt I was there, glad you managed to keep a sense of humour!
On a serious note, seems some airlines are just getting beyond the point to cope. Yes, weather can be a problem, but....

oh that's a good one greendragon...
happens to the best of us. the sense of humor is great, ha ha ha!!

Nominating for "the best 2005 thread" award!

That was unreal! I feel bad for laughing so hard but it's funny that the best trip report is by someone not even a fodorite! I would hope it was all fake, but with the stories I've been reading lately, I unfortunately believe it. Does Glen intend to take any additional recourse?

I think Glen is happy it's over, and planning on learning how to fly his own plane for next year's event!

What's funny is that this couple regularly travels. His parents live in Seattle, and they go there every year for either Thanksgiving or Christmas. They both go fairly regularly to Amtgard events, and his wife goes on cruises and vacations with her parents at least twice a year. This trip was just highly jinxed!

This trip report makes all the others with airport hassles dim by comparison.

Sorry for their troubles but what a great story!

Brilliant! Could we convince Glen and Lily to try out for The Amazing Race and write it up, as it REALLY is?

Somehow I doubt it -- Glen doesn't even WATCH network TV, much less participate in it!!!

I wonder whether they will actually try this again next year?

It seems that "there are no hotels" is a common response from airlines these days. We were told that there were "no hotel rooms" available, anywhere, in Philadelphia. Amazing, eh?

This was USAirways, by the way, and not Delta.

During the same awful trip when there were no hotels in Philadelphia, we were also told that it would be impossible to reroute us, even though we had missed every possible connection to Florence we had set up in Rome, Italy.

Upon arrival in Amsterdam, where we never had any intentions of arriving on this trip, a very pleasant Dutch representative of USAirways said he would see what he could do. He appeared a few minutes later with two tickets from Amsterdam to Florence, where we were headed in the first place.

Apparently, there are no hotels in Philadelphia and Atlanta, and agents in Amsterdam can make things happen that agents in Philadelphia can not.

One learns amazing new things every time one flies!