OK, a small deviation from my normally produced stable of political blog posts.  As I write this, I am sitting in my new "home away from home" — John Wayne Airport in Orange County.  I arrived here at 6:45am this morning to catch a flight up to San Francisco.  Little did I know that it would turn into the day from hell – literally.

Not disclosed to me and a couple of hundred other bleary-eyed early morning travelers was that we were being placed onto a "lemon" aircraft that he been having trouble the previous two days with its backup system that controls the rear flaps of the plane (I guess, and it makes sense, these plans have backup system for everything they can — no second chances at 30,000 feet!). 

To make a long story long, we ended up taxiing out to the runway, and then back to the terminal, and then after an hour of waiting, we repeated the process again.  Eventually the flight was canceled and I am on a Southwest flight in just a few minutes into San Jose.  We won’t talk about the 45 minutes stuck on the cell phone trying to get a refund of my flight costs back to my credit card — shouldn’t that happen automatically?

In the end, I am dead tired (you try waking up to publish this website and THEN get to the airport by 7am), I missed two key meetings in the city, and am the proud owner of a UAL "Sorry We Inconvenienced You" $100 credit for a future flight — whoopee!

Throughout all of this, I have been pecking away at a commentary that goes into some detail on last Saturday’s State GOP Executive Committee meeting.  While FR readers are already used to me being candid and direct — with my sleep deprivation, and frustration at UAL, this piece is shaping up to be particularly pithy and catty.  So much so that I may have to link back to this post with an apology to anyone whom i offend.

Speaking of which, if any attendees of that Saturday meeting want to drop me any insights or observations from that meeting, feel free to do so here, and let me know if your observations are "on" or "off" the record…

Look for it either tomorrow or Wednesday.  Depends on whether my travel "drama" is through so I can get back to work…

This entry was posted on Monday, April 20th, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.