Hi, friends!
A shit ton more flights are cancelled today. Anybody got a truly atrocious travel story to share?
The worst I know of come secondhand. In high school, a bunch of my friends took a *pilgrimage* to Rome to try to be the bestest lil catholics. They invited me, but amazingly “we’re going to sleep on the floor of empty churches at night” was not a selling point. But I digress.
On the transatlantic leg of the flight, there ended up being a bathroom sewage leak that got all over their luggage and ruined a ton of stuff. Remember, this was ye olde days before hard side luggage and these students were using a lot of backpacks and duffel bags to easily carry their meager worldly goods on their holy pilgrimage. And of course it was the era of travelers cheques and limited phone access for international calls etc etc, and it was definitely a rough trip for them.
I didn’t have many travel horror stories that I suffered personally except the return from my first trip to Korea some 43 years ago.
We ended up stuck at LAX for almost 9 hours waiting for a connecting flight… it was where I learned that connecting flights suck (don’t blame dad as flights to Korea at the time were bloody expensive and connections made them cheaper). The worst part was the boredom… what are you going to do for 9 hours? At the time they had an arcade at the terminal so I spent a couple of hours and about 30 bucks of my parents money playing video games terribly to the point that I was even bored of video games.
Anyway some cousins decided to visit and we went to the cafeteria. I got a milk (or malk) which later gave me food poisoning and gastrointestinal distress some 72 hours later at home. My mom never really forgave that cousin for that (it wasn’t his fault, but mom logic dictated that it was his money that poisoned her precious (me) so it was his fault.)
The worst part was that I ended up at the hospital for 7 days because I was so sick (I was so bloated that my mom called an ambulance.) First trip to Korea and then first trip to the hospital in an ambulance.
The first time we went to Barcelona we misjudged how close the airport was, so on the way back we got to the airport three hours early, the flight was delayed by three hours, and then the flight took about nine hours. In 15 hours you can go from New York to Tokyo.
My worst travel horror story would take way too long to post here. Suffice it to say, there was an ice storm, several failed attempts at getting on a stand by flight, a frozen de-icing machine, a bus from Chicago to Milwaukee, and lost luggage.
You didn’t sit next to John Candy did you?
I’ve had so many but one that sticks out was being delayed out of CA for many hours (Alaska Air) and when the plane finally left we flew over Seattle for an hour & 1/2 waiting for fog to clear. This was November, the foggiest month in WA & they gave us a plane with no fog landing capability? My daughters were very young and the oldest lost it and announced she wanted to go home now! Between the crying, they finally decided to fly to Portland to land because we were running low on fuel. We got to PDX, changed planes and flew back to SEA. A friend was picking us up supposed to be at 8pm, now at 2am he drove to the airport in the fog and picked us up, back to his house to get our car, 2 ft of visibility. On the drive home they had (rolling slowdowns) where they block all lanes of traffic to 10 MPH & you drive behind a convoy. I never understood the purpose of this other than to piss me off and make me drive 90 when I got around them! Took a bunch to get the girls to forget about that trip and get on a plane again.
One time I arrived a bit late for a layover at Dulles airport. That is my worst travel story and I used to live in airports and hotels.
If this isn’t the worst travel story you’ve ever heard it simply means you’ve never arrived a bit late for a layover at Dulles airport.
I’ve never flown through Dulles but I’ve heard it spoken about in the same miserable tones that people use for Newark.
There was the Peggy Olson line from Mad Men…
Kid: I don’t want to go to Newark!
Peggy: Nobody does.
Dulles is about as awful as O’Hare in different ways.
Landing in Newark is the fucking worst. I’ve driven I95 enough times through that way that I’ve seen plane after plane trying to land and the crosswinds sending the tail sideways. I had avoided Newark like the plague until one time, about two years ago, when it was my least worst option for a connection. Never, ever, ever, again. I’ll take a goddamned prop plane through Brunswick before I land in Newark again.
Due to a missed connection in college, I had to spend a couple of hours at night in the Port Authority bus station about 30 years ago. That was pretty grim.
I once took a Greyhound from Chicago to New York. It was a long trip.
I took a bus from Izmir to Istanbul and assumed there would be a bathroom.
I was wrong. That got kind of rough toward the end.
I’ve already mentioned this one… road trip to Toronto for the Vanier Cup (Canada City’s version of the Collegiate Championship for Footbawl) on a school bus with a bunch of drunks. We assumed we were going on coaches with actual bathrooms. Ass-u-me.
My friend was the butterfingers that day when he spilled the improvised urinal (pop bottle with a hole cut in it) onto someone else while trying to empty it out the window.
I’m partial to this one.
I’m partial to that one too, but I feel I should never miss a chance to post some Blaze Foley.