Our long national nightmare

I'm never flying Untied Airlines again, if I can help it (might be tough once we move to Chicago, though). Our plane was supposed to take off from O'Hare at 7:26 PM last night, which would get us into Logan at 11:05 - late, but not unreasonably so. When we got to the airport, we saw the flight had been delayed till 8:11. Still not a big deal, so we went to Chili's and had some dinner. I had a chipotle bacon black bean burger, since it was (seriously!) the healthiest thing on their shortened version of the menu. Delicious.

Getting out of Chili's, we saw the ETD was now 8:41. Over the next hour, the plane was delayed 6 more separate times, including delays of 1, 3, and 4 minutes. Finally, with the departure time in the late 9's, the pilot came over the intercom and said he needed to leave the airport because of a family emergency. Turns out his wife was giving birth. The saga was just beginning.

United told us not to worry, they would get another pilot (from the airport bar?). After another 45 minutes, at about quarter to ten, they cancelled the flight, because they couldn't find another pilot, and announced that we had all been re-booked on a flight to Boston leaving at 6:00 AM. The ensuing stampede to the customer service booth, combined with the numerous other United flights that had been canceled due to the approximately seven drops of rain that had fallen on Chicago that day, created a line that was probably, literally, over an hour long.

We walked a couple gates past that to another random gate that was just finishing up the boarding process, to Newark, I think, and I talked the lady into staying a minute and giving us a hotel voucher, since there were no more flights to Boston that had any seats available. She booked us a room at the Holiday Inn Rolling Meadows, which turned out to not only not be in the airport (there was a Hilton in our terminal), but to be the third closest Holiday Inn to the airport, about half an hour away.

On the way to the hotel shuttle, we stopped by the bag claim area to grab our suitcase, which had our clothes, toiletries, and everything else. One problem - United hadn't taken our bags off the plane, due to "abnormal operations", so we wouldn't be able to get our bag for the night. We arrived at the hotel shuttle zone at about 10:05, and I called the hotel. Turns out they have a shuttle every hour, on the hour. The last one was at 11.

We went back into the terminal and walked up to the first class ticketing counter, which was the only one that was still staffed, to attempt to get a cab voucher or a closer hotel. When we were finally second in line, the agent said they were closed for the evening and walked away. Luckily, we had wasted about half an hour, and got back to the shuttle zone at about 10:45. The shuttle zone now had approximately the human density of Times Square on New Year's. We found out where our shuttle stopped, positioned ourselves, and leaped on as it was rolling to a stop. That turned out to be a good move, as it had to leave about 10 former United customers on the curb due to lack of seats.

On the ride to the hotel, we learned that the first shuttle to the airport, half an hour away, in the morning left at 5:30 AM. Great. We checked in at about 11:30, scheduled a wakeup call at 3:30 and a taxi at 4, and passed out, me with my contacts in due to lack of case and fluid.

In the morning, after we checked through security and bought our large Starbucks, I went to the customer service counter to get a reimbursement voucher for our cab ride that morning. The agent informed me that they couldn't do that; I would have to go to the website and file a claim. Luckily, our flight was only delayed by 20 minutes, and we got into Boston, and got our bag, which had spent the night on the floor of Logan - turns out, they had flown the plane to Boston with our bags, but without any passengers.

To recap:
United delayed our flight at least 8 separate times for no apparent reason.
Our flight was canceled because United didn't have enough pilots to deal with an expected occurrence.
United didn't give us our suitcase.
United booked us a hotel half an our away from the airport (for comparison, downtown Chicago is 20 minutes away).
A United agent walked away from the counter rather than help me.
The hotel United booked for us had no transportation available that would get us back to the airport in time for our flight.
United customer service representatives were unable to give basic customer service when I asked them about taxi reimbursement.
They took our bags to Boston without us and left them sitting on the floor next to the baggage claim unguarded.

Oh yeah, and the seats were small and the coffee was bad.

Bitchfest over. Let us never speak of it again. Without further ado...

Ornithology gone PC in a really funny, sad way.

The Pistons lose 4 straight games and the series to the Cavs. LeBron put on some great performances, no doubt. But when the rules dictate that when a star player throws himself into a group of defenders a foul is called, it leads to an ugly brand of basketball that is really impossible to watch. Unless the NBA fixes the arbitrary quality of its officiating, they may have lost me.

Idiots of the week. I guess the RNC wanted Kiefer Sutherland, but he's too short to be electable... (Also, Republicans are still scared of the implications of meat-packing).

Finally, we rented an apartment in Chicago! It's a beautiful place in Uptown, close to the train, in a gorgeous neighborhood, by the lake... perfect in just about every way.