Are You Kidding Me?

If I was unsure before, it is solidified now. Traveling and New York hate me. They hate me. As I've stated before, my flight to New York two months ago was delayed, my flight from New York a month ago was delayed, and my flight back to New York a month ago was delayed.  Well my final return flight to Florida from JFK was MAJORLY delayed. I'm not talking like 4 hours. I'm talking 12 hours and two flight cancelations delayed.  So here's the story. I leave my apartment at 11 expecting it to take me at least an hour and a half to get to the airport since I was planning on taking the airtrain.  Since my bags were too heavy and  I could barely make it half a block without stopping and changing arms, I hailed a cab about a block from my apartment.  I get to JFK, check in, and wait in line to get my bag tag. I get to the counter, hand the man my boarding pass and ID, put my bag on the scale (1.2 pounds under weight thankfully!), and wait.

Man- "Ma'am, this flight is cancelled."
Me- "No, sir, it's not. That's my boarding pass. I just checked in five minutes ago."
Man in Charge- "Ma'am I'm sorry that flight literally just got cancelled five minutes ago."
Me- "So, what does that mean? What do I do? When is the next flight?"
MIC- "Well, the next flight is not until 9 pm tonight."
Me- "So, can you guarantee me a ticket on that flight?"
MIC- "Thankfully, since you are here two hours early, I can print you a boarding pass right now. Or, I can put you on a flight to any where else you would like to go."
Me- "Okay. So can you guarantee that I will get into Jacksonville tonight if I book on the 9?"
MIC- "Well, I can give you a boarding pass but I can't guarantee it will leave. The weather is only getting worse right now. I would say your best bet is to probably just rebook on the 8 am tomorrow morning."
Me- "Sir, I'm graduating from college tomorrow and I kind of need to be there, so tomorrow morning is not an option.  It's fine. Just put me on the 9."

With a new boarding pass in my hand and tears running down my face, I made my way past security, grabbed a seat at my gate and waited it out.  Three hours later, I made my way to the bar and enjoyed some wine and hummus.  Another three hours after that I made my way back to the gate to wait the remaining 2 hours there. This flight was supposed to board at 8:30. At 8:30, the gate agent lady came on and told us there was going to be a 30 minute delay because our plane is sitting at customs because it just came in from Cancun and is waiting to be cleared. Thirty minutes later...

"I'm sorry ladies and gentlemen, but there seems to be a hold up at customs.  The plane is waiting to be cleared. Once it is cleared, it must come from terminal four, here to terminal five, go through a security check, be catered and cleaned, then we may begin the boarding process.  Right now we are estimating the departure time to be 10:30."

Seriously? At least it's not cancelled.  Next thing I know, a plane is pulling up to the gate. A plane. I have never been more excited! They open the gate and people get off the plane.  In my excitement, I approach the counter and ask the man if this is our plane.

Man- "No. That's a different plane."
Me- "Well, then why is it at our gate?"
Man- "Because, this is their gate."
Me- "But this is our gate. So where is our plane going?"
Man- "It's coming here. This flight is going to deplane and when our flight clears customs, we will move the plane that is here now and bring your plane over."
Me- "Well why can't we just use that plane?"
Man- "Because that's not your plane."
Me-"Okay. I'm just trying to understand here. There is a plane at our gate, but it's not our plane. And we can't use that plane. But, our plane is sitting at another terminal where it is not being cleared by customs so we can't get on it yet. And once our plane finally clears customs and comes over here it has to go through another security check by you then get cleaned and catered then we can board and go to Jacksonville?"
Man- "Yes. But we are also waiting on a crew."
Me- "A crew? There was a crew here 2 hours ago. Where did they go?"
Man- "That wasn't your crew?"
Me- "Then how come they were standing here waiting for the plane and when I approached the one man he said 'Hi I'm John and I'm flying this plane to Jacksonville tonight.'?"
Man- "I don't know. Your crew is in Washington because of a cancelled flight."
Me- "Okay so now we are also waiting on a crew? Let me get this straight. We have a plane that is not here and no crew. We have no plane and no crew and it's 10:30. So is this flight going to get cancelled too?"
Man- "I can't tell you that."

Are you kidding me? You can't tell me that! I am on my second cancelled flight of the day and if you don't tell me something soon, I will have a minor freak out. At this point, I call my mom, tell her to do whatever she needs to do because I need to be out of this freaking city and there are 300 people on this flight that is most likely going to get cancelled and only 3 seats tomorrow. My mom finds a flight on US Airways at 6 am the next morning from LaGuardia. The second that man came on the intercom at 11:30 and announced the flight was cancelled, Mom clicked reserve, I grabbed my obnoxiously heavy carry ons, walked to baggage claim, sat for an hour waiting for my bag, stood in a taxi line for half an hour, got back to my apartment at 1:30 (thankfully I still had the keys and I could get in touch with my roommate so she would undo the dead bolt), slept for 2 hours, woke up at 3:30, got in a cab at 4, got to LaGuardia at 4:30, checked in, got on a plane to DC, waited 2 hours, got on a (on time!) flight to Jacksonville, drove 45 minutes to the beach, got in my car and drove 3 hours to Tallahassee.

Longest travel day ever. It sucked. I cried. I laughed in irony. I finally made it home!