remember that show 'terminal' with tom hanks?

so i had a business trip planned to miami beach for a telecom conference and then to visit a few customers in the area.

figured this would be a good one to bring along my spouse or significant other (same person) . . . see the plan is, i go to work during the day while she sits on the beach or at the pool, then we meet up at night for dinner and dancing (square dancin y'all) .. . . (grab your partner doce do . . )

so we gets ourselves to the airport at 7:00 for an 8:00 flight . . . by the time we get to the gate (had to stop for burger king breakfast sandwidch), we are the last two on the plane.

instead of shutting the door and pushing back we wait, oddly for another 20 minutes. finally the captain ( i like to think his name is jack; jack sparrow) gets on the intercom to tell us that a windshield heat sensor is bad and they will try to find one here at the airport and we'll all be on our way. turns out, the part was not at the airport but instead in houston on continental's main tool box -o- love. so instead of an 8:00am departure, its noon.

noon comes and goes with the word of a successful installation of said windshield heat sensor but there is another problem . . . someone stole the exit sign from the airplane. no, you did hear correctly, someone stole the effin exit sign with the arrows that points passengers to the big door where people get on and get off the aircraft.

the other passengers and i figure, let's get a permanent marker and a barf bag, write 'exit' on it and duct tape it where it belongs and get out of effington. apparently, the faa does not work like that, so another airline is going to fly one in. so the 8:00am went to noon and the noon went to 4:00pm . . . now they'll give us food vouchers and put us up in a hotel in houston when we arrive there.

off to dick clark's diner with the hip music, the aging pop culture oozing from the muraled walls and a nice american indian waiter . . .let's call him ricky

back to our gate dutifully at 4:00 along with the 180 other passengers we've sort have made friends with, only to find out that the wrong exit sign was flown in. . . . . yes, the wrong exit sign (they should really standardize to just one).

now the 8:00am is not to leave until midnight and most passengers just come unglued.

we'd had enough, so we got our bags pulled off the airplane, got some food vouchers, a refund on her ticket and 12 hours after arriving, we left the airport, same city, same view.

you hear about these airline horror stories . . .but you always hear them from others and keep saying 'that sucks'

take it from this one . . . . .it sucks.