The vacation, once it got started, was nice. I sat on the beach (getting burned on the very first day), was actually able to appreciate the warm ocean water, and found the weather much to my liking. We also spent a day in Charleston looking at old houses. Most importantly I hopefully didn’t embarrass Susan in front of her friends or parents, who provided gracious Southern hospitality and golf swing tips. I even got to see the snout of an eight foot alligator lurking in the water hazard of the links.

Of course, I had to get there first. This is where the real story of the vacation begins, because it took me over twenty four hours to get from Seattle to Hilton Head Island. My travel nightmare began when I checked in at the counter at Sea-Tac around 11 am on Thursday. I should have known what to expect when the ticket agent rudely heaved my luggage onto the conveyor and didn’t bother to tell me which gate the flight was leaving from.

The trouble really began soon after. During the flight to Chicago the pilot told us we were going to be flying circles over North Dakota because President Bush was landing at O’Hare. When I landed half an hour late I soon found out my flight (and the only one) to Savannah had been canceled. Most of the other flights out of Chicago had been terminated or delayed as well; they blamed thunderstorms (which I couldn’t see any) and the arrival of Air Force One (which I could see on the far side of the tarmac). So I stood in the customer service line for over an hour along with hundreds of other disgruntled passengers and made arrangements to be on standby for a seven o’clock PM flight to Atlanta, in the hopes that it would be easier to catch a flight to Savannah from there. This flight became the 9:15, then the 9:45, and finally the 10:15 flight (changing gates and terminals each time, and Chicago is not a small airport). I ended up missing standby for the first flight, then ran across the airport and managed to make standby for the last flight of the night to Atlanta which had been delayed to 10:45. I was the last person to board the plane, snagging a seat in the first class cabin - but sat at the gate for half an hour until they told us we had to change planes due to mechanical failure. So we all deplaned and sat around until after midnight. They boarded us back to front on the replacement plane, and when they got to the front they told me the person whose seat I had taken had showed up for the flight so I couldn’t board; the damned lady must have known this was happening and snuck on before her seat was called. Finally they asked some customers to hold their babies and managed to squeeze two more passengers on board, self included.

I got into Atlanta at 3:30 AM (sans checked in luggage, I might add). Crashed at a hotel for a couple of hours after calling United to arrange travel through Charlotte on US Airways. When I got to the airport at 8:30 AM, an hour before my flight, the US Airways agent refused to give me a ticket until United gave me a canceled ticket for the Chicago to Atlanta leg of the flight. I went over to the United desk (jumping the long line in favor of the first class counter) where they spent half an hour puttering around trying to beat their computer into issuing me the proper canceled ticket. By this time I had clearly missed the US Airways flight, so they issued me a ticket for a flight directly from Atlanta to Savannah on Delta - which was scheduled to leave in 30 minutes. I went to security only to be refused by the TSA person who said I needed a boarding pass, not a ticket. I ran to the Delta desk, waited in yet another line, ended up getting my ticket changed for a flight two hours later, and finally managed to get to Savannah some time after 1 pm on Friday, a full day after I’d left the house. Oddly enough my checked in luggage was waiting for me when I arrived; who knows how long before me it had arrived.

I had no plane delays on the return trip, but just to show me they still cared, United sent my luggage to Washington, D.C. instead. And this is why I hope United Airlines will sink back into bankruptcy and go belly up, because as far as I’m concerned it couldn’t happen to a more deserving airline.

But otherwise - the vacation really was quite nice.