Oh, I have a rant.

Never have I been more in the mood to rant than after my flight fiasco on the way home from California. You see, it started off perfectly with my flight out of San Jose leaving on time and landing on time in Dallas (at 6pm), where I was to catch my connecting flight home. I had a window of 45 minutes to get off the airplane, walk over 8 gates and board the second airplane. "Perfect," I thought as we landed. "Not so perfect," I thought a few minutes later when the captain announced that due to earlier storms, flights had been delayed and we were going to have to wait a "short while" for our gate to become available. Well... the short while was no short while at all. I was kept calm by being told that surely my connecting flight had also been affected by the delay. That, and chatting with the lovely couple from Michigan sitting next to me. Nearly 2 hours later (yes, that's right 2 hours) I got off the airplane and ran to the gate where my flight home to Toronto was supposed to be, only to see that the screen read "Los Angeles" and the departure board no longer had a flight to Toronto listed. "Oh crap" was the next thought. I looked around me, hoping to find someone who could help. But due to the earlier delays, the airport was an absolute zoo and every employee seemed pre-occupied. When I overheard someone else asking about the Toronto flight, my ears perked up just in time to hear the words "nothing else to Toronto tonight.. probably tomorrow morning.. go stand in the ticket line". So with my 2 fellow Toronto-bound passengers, we got in the long line of people waiting to both check in and rebook tickets. 90 minutes later, the ticketing agent confirmed that yes, I was indeed screwed, and the next flight to Toronto wasn't until the morning. And in addition to being screwed, since my missed connection was due to bad weather, the airline wouldn't pay for a hotel room or anything else for that matter. I wanted to point out that the bad weather had happened PRIOR to my arrival and if their terminal had been more efficient maybe I wouldn't have had to sit on one airplane while the airplane I needed to be on left without me.. but I knew it would be a waste of breath. The 2 guys also traveling Toronto told me they had booked hotel rooms for the night and "if you're not uncomfortable, you're welcome to join us". And as much as the offer of a hotel bed was VERY appealing, and these guys didn't seem too sketchy.. I politely declined (I figured I was sufficiently screwed at this point).
I cleared security and went back into the terminal. After a teary phone call home "yes, I know my flight is listed as arriving tonight.. but I'm not on it" I realized I needed to take charge and deal with the situation. I went and purchased the first 2 Harry Potter books and some ice cream (dinner). I found a comfortable chair in a lounge, pulled out my airplane blanket (somehow I had anticipated needing it) and curled up. Any maybe it was the ice cream.. or maybe it was the distraction of Harry Potter, or maybe even it was from just sheer exhaustion, but I gradually stopped being angry and began to feel that being stranded overnight in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport wasn't such a terrible thing after all. Wide awake at 5am (having slept maybe 2hrs the entire night), I went for a ride on the AirTrain (monorail!!!) and later walked the entire terminal a few times (just for some early morning exercise). My new flight home departed on time at 9am and I made it to my house early that afternoon. So yes - I was still annoyed that I had missed my original flight, that no one in the airport was quick to offer assistance (or free food), and that I missed my intended last day of work. But I was home sweet home, and in the end, that's what mattered.

(ps- While on vacation I had taken a liking to Bowling for Soup's song "Come back to Texas"... but after my 15 hour stay in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport.. that song now makes me shudder)