Long Day's Journey Into Night

This week, I went to Florida with two friends. Just a quick trip down and back. Well, at least a quick trip down.

Coming back home though was another matter.

We arrived at our departure gate only to find that it had been changed and we had to walk to one further down the corridor.

And so the journey began. Had we known how it was going to progress, we probably would have opted to keep on walking. It would have been faster.

Within minutes, however, they started boarding. First class (not us!), zone 1, zone 2. Then, silence. Uh oh. This was not at all encouraging.

Three. Three. Call zone three. I gripped the handle of my suitcase more tightly, preparing to sprint toward the gate ahead of the unruly gaggle of chatty high-schoolers on a field trip, and the woman with the squalling child. Those kids may have been a lot younger, but I had more experience elbowing people aside. I also had a really big purse, and I wasn't afraid to use it.

Wait. There was something happening at the gate. The crowd there seemed to be getting larger instead of smaller. It almost looked like...But no. I couldn't be. And yet...Were zones 1 and 2 getting off the plane?

Yes, they were. As the ontime sign changed to delayed, there was a mad dash to occupy those oh-so-comfortable vinyl airport chairs. Securing three, we glumly slumped down and broke out the chocolate and cell phones.

A one-hour delay due to weather. Well, it was clear as a bell there so the rain must be in DC, right? Wrong. Sunshine and blue skies there too. So now they were delaying flights due to good weather? Gotta love those airlines.

One hour later, we got to repeat the whole fun-filled boarding process all over again (can't get enough of that ), and this time, they actually let everyone get on, closed the doors and took off.

The pilot filled us in on his flight plan. First, we would fly out over the ocean, then, just before we got to Europe, we would turn around, buzz a few cornfields in the midwest and finally head north. He wasn't kidding.

For the next four hours, we watched the sun set out of the left side of the plane, then the right, then the left and right again as the cast of High School Musical III, Journey to Nowhere, bopped up and down the aisles singing Happy Birthday to their own little Suzie Q eighty-seven thousand times.

Wishing I had asked for something stronger than water the one time the flight attendants had passed by, I prayed for a swift (too late) and merciful end to the torture. But it was not to be.

The pilot announced that there had indeed been a thunderstorm in DC (oh sure, because they had put it out there in the universe) and we were in a line for landing. He had even more good news too. Since we had circled Georgia and the Carolinas so long (seriously, with all this flying time, we could have been deplaning in Paris by now for a lovely meal at an outdoor cafe along the Seine and we were hovering over Georgia? ) we were running low on fuel and needed to land.

This was strictly a fuel and go stop he warned(promised?) us. We would not be deplaning. Then, provided he got clearance, we would fly right into DC (and if he didn't get clearance?)

At this point, we toyed with the idea of taking up a collection and bribing him to land anywhere close to DC if he couldn't land there. Dulles, Baltimore, even New Jersey for God's sake. Just somewhere in the northeast.

Passengers began peppering the flight crew with questions. What about connecting flights (this elicited a pitying look), how many planes were ahead of us in the line (this elicited a dismayed look), would we ever see our loved ones again, or should we look into real estate in Greensboro (this elicited the worst thing of all, an actual answer).

One crew member finally cracked and told us the crew was close to "timing out" on the number of hours they were allowed to work and if that happened...good-bye DC, hello Motel 6. I began googling hotels on my blackberry.

Fate finally smiled upon us though, and after a mere hour trapped inside a metal tube, inhaling jet fuel fumes with two hundred of our closest friends, some of which had thankfully brought along their screaming babies for a diversion, we were once again airborne.

Seven and a half hours after we began our two and a half journey, it finally ended (now I know how Gilligan felt). As we exited the aircraft past a bedraggled and surly crew, I turned on my blackberry and found that I had a message from my good friend in New Jersey asking if I wanted to hop on a plane this weekend for a fast trip down to Florida.

Really. You can't make this stuff up.