Return to the South

Because this story is just too good, I had to share:

Last Thursday, Steve returned home from work with news that he had to go to Louisiana on business from Monday to Wednesday.  He didn't have much time to buy his plane tickets or even prepare his presentation to be given Monday.  To top it all off, he was going to Louisiana for a new project smaller project he has gotten roped into so he didn't know all the material that had to be presented.

He was able to find a flight out of a smaller airport in Ft. Wayne to get him to Louisiana with a short layover in Atlanta.  Before he left the house at 4:30am on Monday morning, he had already been informed that his first flight had been delayed which would make his short layover pretty tight.  Before getting on his first flight, he talked with a representative which talked him through his options in Atlanta just in case he missed his next flight.

His first flight landed in Atlanta 5 minutes before the next flight was to take off.  Needless to say, he didn't make it onto the flight to Louisiana.  He had to do standby for the next flight but discovered the standby line was pretty long.  He decided to jump airlines and purchased a standy ticket through another airline to get him to Louisiana via Houston.  He wasn't sure if he'd get on the flight, but he ended up being bumped up to first class and got on the flight from Atlanta to Louisiana.

He got into Louisiana 4 hours later than had been planned.  He went to pick up his rental car, but because he was late into Louisiana, they had given away his reservation and didn't have another car to give to him.  So he had to call a taxi to take him to the plant.  He was supposed to give his presentation at 5, but got to the plant at 5.  The security wouldn't let him through and didn't understand what he was there for and such.  Finally, Steve got ahold of his boss in Lima who got ahold of someone in the meeting in the Louisiana plant to go to security and escort him into the plant.  He of course had gotten there too late, and missed his presentation time slot.  Of course!

After the others finished up the meeting, he had to call the taxi again to take him to his hotel.  Steve was fully prepared for the hotel reservation to have fallen through, but luckily there were no problems there.  The car rental place was able to get him a car the next day.  So in the morning, he had to call the taxi yet again to take him back to the airport to pick up the rental.  Now, I didn't explain this yet, but the taxi that he had been using the whole time was the same.  It wasn't a marked taxi car like we usually think of, but it was an some guy running a taxi service out of a converted van..  The driver also had some friends in the van with him when he was escorting Steve around.  And to top it off, he preferred to be paid in cash as opposed to a credit card so he even took Steve to a gas station to get cash.  How sketchy!!

After Steve got his rental car, things returned to normal.  He was able to present his part of the project on Tuesday, but he felt it was rushed.  Oh well, it was a good learning process for him.  He also had to readjust to the southern accent.  It's amazing how different people sound down south!  His return back to Lima didn't go as planned.  He was supposed to return to Ft. Wayne via Atlanta.  He got to Atlanta fine, and boarded the next flight as planned.  However, due to weather in the Ft. Wayne area, his plane was grounded in Cincinnati which delayed his arrival at home by a few hours.

Once the weather cleared, they got back on the plane and returned to Ft. Wayne.  Steve thought he was on his merry way home when he tried to exit the airport parking.  Due to the storm that had just gone through, the ticket machine (where you pay) was out of order and there was no attendant in the booth.  He had to call a number and wait on someone to show up.  They still couldn't pay at that location and Steve had to follow the maintenace person to another ticket machine at another parking lot that was still working.  There, he was finally able to pay his parking pass and head back home to Lima.

What a ridiculous trip!  Sorry Steve.  Here's hoping our trip to Europe is much smoother :)