Leaving on a jet plane, don't know when I'll be back again.......

Wow, I just slept 14 hours. I'd still be asleep if I didn't hear the hubster  dialing the phone down stairs, it makes a shrill beep. But since I'm awake I'll tell you a story. Yesterday was the worst travel experience of my life, I mean I'm generally optimistic, but it was seriously disastrous. The only way it could have been worse would be if the plane actually crashed, which we thought it was going to at any second. We left out of Denver, this flight and our connection home were both posted as "on time", so off we went., foolishly expecting everything to be in order. I popped three Dramamine, one more than my usual dose, but I wanted to sleep all the way... Boy was I in for a surprise. I woke up to the plane slamming around and first thought we must be on the ground in Philadelphia and man was it a rough landing. The captain's voice came on, but instead of saying "welcome to Philadelphia where the local time is 7am" he said, "ladies and gentlemen we are over Nebraska and have run into a major storm system I apologize for the turbulence, we are going to try a lower altitude and see if it gets any better." He then directed the flight crew to sit down and buckle up. We slammed around as we steeply dropped in altitude, but it didn't get better. At points we were lifted right off the seat, not far, we were buckled, but yikes. The pilot came back on repeating that he was going to drop in altitude to see if it would get better. As we continue to slam around everyone was silent. We all knew it was bad, and no one wanted to say a word. This whole time I had my head on Chris's shoulder holding his hand, occasionally glancing up to see if he was showing any signs of fear, but he just had his eyes closed, maybe he was praying, maybe he was trying to stay calm. The captain came back on with the same message each time he said it sounding less and less convinced. How much altitude can we lose here? We had been in a steady descent for quite a while, so steep I thought for sure those oxygen masks were going to come flying out of the ceiling. I was glad we were over Nebraska and not someplace with hills. For the first time Chris turned to me and seemed concerned. I told him the flight attendants hadn't gone through doing a headcount yet so it couldn't be that bad. I knew it was a full flight and they already knew how many people were on board, so they probably wouldn't have to, but I didn't tell him that. After what felt like eternity, the captain announced that we were only about 50 miles out from Philadelphia and directed the flight crew to ready the cabin for landing. When the plane came to a stop, instead of the usual, where everybody gets pushy and jumps up and stands in the aisle while waiting to get off the plane, everyone remained seated and in an extremely orderly fashion collected their belongings and exited the plane in total silence. As we walked from the gate I could hear people saying they've been praying the entire time and voicing their concerns to those around them. All I have to say is those were some damn good pilots and someone upstairs was looking out for us.  We finally found a departure screen with our flight on it, I figured from here on out it should be smooth sailing. Wrong again Jean. To our horror it said "CANCELLED". We were directed to a help desk, where we met three women who were straight out of a movie that relied heavily on the use of stereotypes to substitute for the writers lack of whit. Through my Dramamine haze I watched the people in line in front of us. "Child, you best not miss this next flight I should not even be doing this, you have to pay better attention, this is ridiculous.  If you miss this next flight I'm not going to help you again. Why you comin' to me with attitude?" She pointed to her own ears, and the girl she was addressing ripped her white ear buds out and threw them in her bag. What a way to address this woman? I half expected her to follow it up with three snaps and an "Mmmmm hm!" But I guess she drew the line somewhere. When it was our turn we were told that we are stuck in Philadelphia, there was no room on any of the other flights into Manchester. She asked us what our backup airport was, I said the closest one was Boston, only an hour drive from Manchester give or take. Chris asked if they would put us on the connector flight over to Manchester from Boston, which made me giggle because they're so close together. I leaned over and said they would probably put us on the bus since it's only like 14 feet. She laughed and told him to listen to me because I was a smart woman. She said, "we can get you to Boston and then we will sort it out from there." We got to our gate only to find out from the attendant that our tickets were merely standby, that it was a full flight, that we were the 4th in line with standby tickets and that there was no way of knowing where our luggage was. Feeling defeated we sat and waited for The inevitable announcement that we would not be making this flight. After a few minutes I decided, nope, that wasn't good enough. I went back to the gate counter, planning to beg, borrow and steal. There was a second attendant now so I timed it just right to talk to her instead, because in my sedated state the first attendant's accent was really hard for me to understand. I explained our situation to the new attendant and asked about our bags, she said they were probably already in Manchester, and that they would've been put on one of the other flights. Just then the first guy we had talked to, looked over and recognized me from before and said "Saari?" I nodded and he handed me to boarding passes with official seat numbers and said we were on this flight. I was so excited, but what I didn't know then was that they were just getting us to Boston and calling it close enough when our car and luggage were in Manchester... And no way to get there. When we arrived in Boston we were told we'd have to pay out of pocket for ground transportation to Manchester. This is not what we were told by the woman we spoke to in Philadelphia, but she evidently didn't annotate our travel records to provide us with a travel voucher upon arrival. Instead we got to speak with both the supervisor and the manager, who told us that we had been booked for a flight into Manchester the following day, but that we had volunteered ourselves to go to Boston instead, and in doing so released the airline from their obligation to get us to Manchester. What!? They never said anything about that, there was no talk of a flight tomorrow, there was no agreement to release them from any obligation. The manager said there was nothing he could do so I asked to speak with his manager, he said he was The highest ranking person. "Oh really, your name is in fact American airlines?" He smiled and said in Boston it is. I locked him in a stare and when it was clear I had his undivided attention I tried logic, no use. Chris tried a tantrum and swearing, no use. I locked him back into a stare and said, "look at me, I am telling you the truth, there was never any talk of us actually having a chance at getting into Manchester, I was told to get on the plane, so I got on the plane. I was just doing what I was told. If I had done anything besides what I was told I probably would've been arrested or something stupid. My ticket says Manchester." I pointed and showed it to him very closely. "A service has been paid for that we have not received. This is dirty, dirty business. If you came to me and paid for a service and I did not give you that service, that is called theft and fraud, I would be arrested, lose my license, and no longer be able to work in my field. But when you do it all you have to say for yourself is, 'I'm sorry for the inconvenience.' That. is. dirty. business. Are you sure that's how you want to do this right now?" He then said "I'm sorry there's nothing I can do here my hands are tied, I believe you 100% because we've had these issues with Philadelphia before, but good luck." We went down to the ground transportation information booth. The woman said it was because we were young, it would be different if we had small children or we were old enough to fake a heart attack. This woman was hilarious, but I couldn't even smile. She gave us a few options, but we were going to have to rent a car, because believe it or not, that was the cheapest plan. We took a bus to Enterprise only to find out that we needed a credit card and not a debit card, once again we were screwed. I have a small credit card but it had just enough on it to barely decline the rental car. Mother furrerrrrAAH!!!! SO, I call the credit card company to pay it down so we could use it, but of course it doesn't automatically apply. This was my snapping point. Tears of rage just started to dump down my face, honestly I could have strangled someone and felt nothing. I call up the credit card company to beg them to push my payment through when, for the first time that day, I was met with friendly compliance! Gasp! Could this be true? A quick and pleasant 3 way call with the bank and all was as it needed to be. Union bank, Capitol One and Enterprise, all have excellent and chipper employees who saved the day! I got us from Boston to Manchester in one piece, which is nothing short of miraculous as the Dramamine still had yet to wear off. We went into the Manchester airport and, for a wonder, found our luggage, evidently just in the nick of time, because it was flagged to get sent to Boston! Off we went to long-term parking, which we triumphantly walked instead of taking the shuttle because it felt good. I almost cried when I finally saw my little car alive and well in their lot. It meant we were finally on the homestretch of this horrendous journey. We stopped to eat and were warmly greeted by a total stranger, just some guy who was there eating, not like a restaurant employee who was being paid to be nice, and it hit me... We were home! NICE people! I could have kissed this man! From that moment on the night was total bliss! We stopped at the Littleton co-op and found amazing deals and more nice people! Then a quick stop in to Walmart for a few other things. We went through the self check out, and as we walked by the attendant she looked us in the eye and smiled and said, "have a good night and a happy new year!" "you too!" I returned in shock. I turned to Chris as the automatic doors opened, "I think she actually meant that!" " I think she DID!" he replied. We got in the car, and headed home with only about 40 minutes left of our journey. Beyond exhausted, we pulled on to our little dirt road with only a half mile left until we were home, I couldn't help but smile as we bounced over the washboards. Our cats greeted us at the car with the fiery passion of a thousand suns and we were even happier to see them. I think I'll just stay home and be a hermit for a few weeks. Visiting Chris' folks in Colorado was truly wonderful, but next time we might just drive.