**Warning: The following contains some rude and harsh language stemming from a frustrated attitude and may be peppered with some unfamiliar terminology invented to apply specifically to certain individuals who don't know their ass from my foot in it.**

I went to Ft. Cambell by way of Nashville this past weekend to see the boyfriend. But this is not a tale of sex, love, or tongue-bathing.

I spent a lot of time with his buddies and heard a lot of crazy war stories. But this is not a tale of Iraq or amusing disregard for the Geneva Conventions.

This is a tale of why major companies go bankrupt, and why some of them fucking SHOULD.

Before I really get started, a certain element of my trip down is worth mentioning. I was on a very full flight and before I knew it, I was pulled into a conversation with two somewhat sleazy businessmen with yellow teeth and hairy arms. As discussion progressed, it was discovered that the guy on the end was an avid hunter, the guy in the middle was a former VP for a meat-processing business, and I was the daughter of a part-time butcher. An hour conversation about meat-cutting and slaughterhouses with strangers would not turn out to be the most notable or interesting part of my journey with the FAA, but it would turn out to be the most pleasant.

3 days with wee and friends, drunken soldier kareoke, good times all around, etc.

So I depart Nashville for Boston around 6:00 pm. Sunday, scheduled to land in Boston at 11:pm. TWENTY FIVE FUCKING HOURS LATER, I find myself on Massachusetts soil. Let's take a look at the preceeding events:

Sunday, 5:15 pm.
Bye bye Weeman, see you in a few weeks and stuff. Time to hop on a plane operated by United Airlines. Yep. United Airlines. Okay good.

5:47 pm.
Boarding time. The plane is not boarding. When it finally does, it sits on the runway for about half an hour. No big deal though, I'll still make my connecting flight in Dulles. We take off and head on our way through the sky.

Here is where things really start to go awry.

The pilot comes on the intercom saying there's some bad weather in Washington and that we'll be in a holding pattern until we're given the all clear to land at Dulles. At this point, all I'm concerned about is making my connection. The present ME wants to go back to the ME of right then and say "Ohhhh grasshoppah.... just you wait".

7:45-ish
The pilot comes back on and says we're now going to land in Harrisburg, PA until we can land at Dulles. We land at Harrisburg. Did I say awry? I meant totally fucking retarded.

The plane lands and we start waiting. While we're there, we need to refuel. There are apparently 10 to 15 other planes ahead of us doing the same thing, so now I'm no longer sure whether I'm waiting for a fuel truck or for a storm to pass. I am sure of two things though. One, I'm going to miss my connecting flight, and two, there is one bathroom on the plane and I am sitting right next to it. However, I had no way of knowing the horrid and miserable torture that factor was to inflict upon me, a pain of the senses that would bring no relief until two fucking hours later.

Two fucking hours later
I’ll leave the horrible bathroom factor to your imagination. After about a dozen apologies and attempts at excuses while thanking us for our patience and understanding (which is one of those lame passive/aggressive pre-emptive efforts to get you not to do something, like "thank you for not smoking". A pet peeve of mine which was being impressively driven at this point, given the circumstances), El Piloto informs us of a certain FAA regulation permitting flight crews from operating more than 15 hours straight, and that they were cancelling the flight. Not only that, but we weren't parked at a gate and it was pouring pissing rain outside. This leg of the journey I will call "We're kicking you off the plane and making you run across the runway while you and all your shit gets soaked. Thanks for flying the friendly skies!" Bastards.

So we're herded into Harrisburg International, which has to be the smallest, most lacking airport ever, and sent to baggage claim. Upon retrieving my poor drenched suitcase, I head over to the ticket counter to find half the plane’s passengers already lined up and freaking out. Everyone's going crazy trying to figure out how they can get to Dulles, an airport that is now totally shut down. Two airline representatives behind the counter are pulling their proverbial hair out and trying not to explode amidst all these anxiety-fueled, disgruntled customers who are now ready to kill the messenger. But finally one of them just stands up and makes an announcement.

We have two options. 1. Wait an hour or so for a bus that will take you to Dulles. From there you can find yourself a flight to wherever you're going if you're connecting, though current information is saying no flights will be available until 6 or 7 tomorrow morning. The bus ride is about two and a half hours, and there's no guarantee there will even be a bus at all. 2. We put you up in a hotel for the night and you can call our 800 number to book a flight for tomorrow from Harrisburg.
Sit in this shithole airport for an hour just to wait for a bus that may or may not show up, then sit on it for 2+ hours only to wait at another shithole airport for 5 or 6 hours for a flight I may or may not be able to get on? All I can say is: THAT <-- fuck

Midnight-ish
I get to the hotel. By this point I had already called and left a message at work to let them know I wasn't going to be there in the morning, so now my mindset has changed to "free hotel room, with cable, quite a decent room actually. Just gotta book a flight for tomorrow. Okay yay." I book a flight from Harrisburg to Dulles to Boston for the following morning, say goodnight to Weeman, and I'm out.

Monday, 9:30 am.
I walk up to the ticket counter with the flight numbers and times I had booked for myself the previous night, along with my ID, which was all I needed to give, I was told. Harry Bohemoth’s brow furls a bit as he tries to pull up my info, then informs me that the flights do not exist.

What?

An hour and three more employees later, all that can be concluded is, in my mind, that United Airlines likes to throw out random times and flight numbers to customers over the phone and then go laugh about it to their friends at the local dive while they drench their dentures in Schlitz and cheap crack. Hell, it’s much more of an explanation for the screw-up than what I got from United’s finest, which was precisely: “*shrug* I dunno.” Awesome business practices. I’m placed on a flight to Boston by way of Philly, a flight that doesn’t leave for another four hours, so I go up to the one eatery in this place to cry in some calamari for a little while. I was reminded of the mom in Home Alone who was diverted and bumped and delayed over and over and all she wanted to do was get home. Only difference with me was, I also wanted to punchkill someone.

1:25 pm.
My flight gets delayed 45 minutes. This means I will miss my connecting flight from Philly. I go back down to the ticket counter and they book me on a later flight out of Philly as back-up. About 10 minutes later it is delayed AGAIN, so I go back to the ticket counter AGAIN and get officially booked onto that later flight. One of the representatives who was there the previous night sees me and is overwhelmingly stunned. Oh right, like you’re really surprised that your nearly-bankrupt incompetent airline is fucking someone in the ass this consistently. (And why the hell does Harrisburg Pennsylvania have an airport anyway?)

2:30 pm.
Boarding time. The plane is not boarding. It has been delayed again, to 2:56. Two businessmen get miffed and go up to the booth at the gate, having to book another flight from Philly since they won’t make their connection to wherever they’re going. They’re quite frustrated and one of them says “well, time to go drink heavily.” For a moment I felt I had found a kindred spririt, but decided I’d had enough of creepy businessmen on the flight down. Did you know that at slaughterhouses there’s a vat they drain cows blood and entrails into and it eventually congeals, and someone actually has to go into the vat regularly and unclog the drain by hand? Anyway...

4-ish
We land at Philly at gate F-something. If you’re going to any gate in section A through E, you have to take a shuttle bus to get there. As if that wasn’t enough of a pain in the ass, there are apparently TWO flights going to Boston, one at gate B2, the other at gate C17. And of course, I – as well as a few other people in the same steadily sinking boat – don’t know which one I’m booked on. We have about 10 minutes till boarding time, and Philadelphia airport is about as big as O’Hare and, I discovered, just as much of a goddamn nightmare to get from point A to point B in (so to speak). I take a chance and go for the B gate, and for the first time during this whole mess, something goes my way – I am booked on that flight. YES. Okay. Things are looking up! What an idiot I was to dare to get optimistic right then.

4:10 pm.
Boarding time. The plane is not boarding. When it finally does, around 4:30, it sits on the ground until 5.

6:35 pm.
I land in Boston. Holy fucking Christ, I land in Boston. Can this be real? It is! It’s real! And now, to find the United Airlines customer service counter to complain about this fiasco. I ask directions to it and OH HOT LOVIN wouldn’t you know it, even though the United Airlines Terminal is HERE, I have to take a shuttle bus to a terminal on the OPPOSITE SIDE OF THE ENTIRE AIRPORT to make a complaint. Very clever. Assholes.

I decide I’m much too exhausted to get as angry as needed (even though in doing so, I was letting the airline win), so I tell myself I’ll call the airline tomorrow and see what I can do then. I just wanted to see the interior of my apartment at this point, so I hopped a cab and went home.

Moral of the story: FUCK United Airlines. They need to DIE PAINFULLY and I hope that $1.6 billion loan they’re begging for to stay in business doesn’t get approved because why the hell should this kind of abomination of a company be allowed to remain standing? So I’m formally boycotting United Airlines. The End and fuck them.

We’ll see what happens when I call customer service and attempt to get any sort of reparation out of these cockwitches.