Crit Goes to Austin

From October 28 until November 1, I'll be out of town attending a college media conference because I'm the tech editor at the newspaper. I'm an important man with important business in Austin, Texas. So I won't be around that much.

I probably won't be able to post, though I may be able to get on Cbox.

HAVE FUN Y'ALL.

I have arrived in Austin with lots of other students/editors from other school newspapers. It's Austin. It's weird. There's already some annoying person playing a ukulele.

I'll be back in a day or so(Technically Monday), but I may not post for another day or two. I'm coming back and just immediately going back to school. It's not gonna be a nice week to me.

Oh my god, guys. Oh my god.

So the process of coming back home was a nightmare of monumental proportions. It wore me and my fellow editors down physically, mentally and emotionally. I don't even want to go in a car now. That is how much I hate any kind of travel at the moment.

The tale begins in Austin. We've finished up our media conference and we have taken a shuttle to the airport. All seemed well and good to start. But as we were checking-in our bags, we learned that something is amiss! Our flight out of Austin will be severely delayed! So delayed, in fact, that we will will almost certainly miss our connecting flight back home. So we then spend roughly 30 minutes waiting for the clerks to re-jigger our flight plans, which was not helped by the fact that the clerk seemed to be a trainee.

We get through that eventually, worried. We check-in our bags and go to wait for our flight. We look at our new boarding passes and realize something: we will not be getting home tonight. At best we will be getting home the next day, possibly in the evening.

So it sets-in. The malaise of waiting in airports, and the frustration of flying. We foolishly keep up some hope that maybe our flight will just haul ass and we will arrive in time to make our original flight and not have to wait overnight.

That did not happen. Instead, we flew from Austin to Chicago and had to bunked down IN the terminal for six hours. We could have gotten a hotel, but frankly it wouldn't have been worth it. We would, at best, spend three hours in the hotel and several hundred dollars. Fortunately, Chicago has enough layovers like us that they provided a room of cots, blankets and pillows so we can just sleep there. That was okay.

I had a few drinks at the 24 hour bar in the empty airport.

Weary and uncomfortable, we got to our next flight. We flew to Orlando, then took a connecting flight to home finally. Now get out a map and plot our course home:

We went from AUSTIN to CHICAGO to ORLANDO to NORFOLK, VA.

A GIANT "N" AND OVER 18 HOURS TO GET HOME.

And they lost our checked-in luggage. Which has ALL of my chargers and most of my clothes. This is in addition to coming back right back into school and assignments and homework and a test.

So if I'm not feeling up to do anything much this week, that's why.

It's good to see you all though.

Update

They found my luggage. For the record, this is the same night when I got back and they lost it. They're shipping it to my house tonight.

So that was one grievance that was very well taken care of. It doesn't make up for everything, but it's good regardless.