Okay, so I’ve already eliminated Airtran from the list of airlines I will ever fly with again but after today I have another one to add to the list. American Airlines. So I’ve been sitting here at O’hare for something like 5 hours now. As I’ve just found out my technical status is a ‘missed connection’, whatever the fuck that really is supposed to mean. All I know is that I made it to Laguardia an hour and fifteen minutes BEFORE my flight. Though my alcohol induced haze I know I breifly caught some mention about ’standby’ when I checked in of course it didn’t register until I made it back here in Chicago.

The details still don’t make sense but apparently I was moved into ’standby’ status on the flight I paid for over three weeks ago. Because American Airlines apparently over sold their flight (WTF?) it was full and they bumped me from my own damn flight. After being dicked around and having walked across O’hare more than once, I finally found a competent employee (gasp). She attempted to explain that somewhere along the line I got fucked. Well, duh. So after being bumped from two other flights I’m still sitting here waiting for a flight to leave for Minneapolis that isn’t oversold so I can have a seat.

There really are two things that greatly piss me off about this situation. First, how the fuck do you oversell a flight? People pay money up front so they have a reserved seat. Are people just in the habit of dishing out $300-800 and ditching their flight? Apparently this must happen so frequently that AA has incorporated it into their business model. I understand how someone might oversell candy bars or computers or something where they simply can’t keep up with demand. A plane, however, has a fixed number of seats which are reserved which people paid for in advance. Secondly, it completely ruins plans I had to hang out with a friend and that just makes me sad. I was really looking forward to it all day and now it’s completely out the window. Well shit.

I guess I’ll still wait and see if I ever get back. Of course the irony of this is that now that I mentioned the airlines fucking name Google Ads will probably post an ad for them on the site. Travelling home just hasn’t been my luck lately, I think next time I’ll just stay.

So the ACM had me out in NYC again this week. This time for our Crossroads publication, we had some of our editors get together at ACM HQ to meet face to face and talk about what else we are going to do with the publication. It will be nice to see some of our changes take place and for those of you who read it I think you will really enjoy the new changes. Enough official business, I take full advantage of the fact that I was in NYC with some fun people. On to the rest of NYC.

First off Gabriel and I stumbled onto this bar The Room while wandering around Soho looking for the cool places to go. This one was definately it, dark semi-swanky but not overly pretentious. There were lots of cool people (normals) it was dark, a little grungy candles and a good beer and wine selection. The next day while taking our other editors out to some nice places oddly enough we ended up there again. I spent most of the night taking with this stylist Katy Robbins dot com as I must refer to her from here on out. Stylist to Scarlet Johansen and many others. One of the things I really like about this city is when you find really cool people who are unpretentious just out and about having fun.

My last night in NYC I ended up ditching out on the idea of a hotel and instead choose to keep myself awake just wandering around the city. Gabriel missed his flight that afternoon and ended up coming along with, which was actually awesome. We hit up all the places Vernonica assigned for me to go. Sushi Samba which was hella swank and had great food. Kelly and Pings was closed unfortunately so thats for next time, lastly this lounge a few blocks from The Room on Sullivan.

Plus earlier in the day Bill and I hung out at a really cool Irish/Scottish bar McFaddens downing more than a few beers. The bartender was cool shit, older guy who definately liked getting people drunk. So we got buzzed while carefully guarding our new jeans picked up at the Banana Republic in Grand Central Station.

All in all yet another good trip in New York … the flight home is another story (read RANT).

This weekend I flew out to Boston, MA for a follow-up meeting with ACM students and HQ employees. After having a great couple of days in which to conduct business it was finally time for me to come home.

My way back, however, has been nothing of what expected. I am currently sitting in Atlanta, GA of all places. I missed my flight to Chicago at Logan airport. Admittedly I was cutting it close in my attempt to get back, of course not as close as Gabrielle (good luck buddy). However, after getting to the airport I find that AirTran’s systems are ALL down. Electronic check-in was not functional, and even better yet…there was a monsterous line for the manual check-in.

So after having waited in line for 25 minutes I was given my hand-written boarding pass. They checked my ID but I’m certain had no way to confirm my reservation. At this point I have 15 minutes to board the flight. This shouldn’t be a problem because I only have carry ons.

Or so it seems…. the flight left…early….25 minutes early. So I’m stuck without a flight because it inexplicably left before it’s scheduled departure time. Well after getting back in that fucking line….I waited another 45 minutes, after which they asked me to simply stand aside they needed to “call someone”. Of course the attendant didn’t say a single word to any other employee about it.

Finally I was given a new set of flights, the first of which was all the way to, any guesses?? Atlanta. Of course the flight didn’t leave for another two hours. So I dragged myself through security for the second time, and decided to park myself in the bar area just for the privilege of purchasing an $8 beer. Over the intercom I hear something about a flight for Atlanta calling for all people on standby. I drop the idea of the beer and run to the gate to see if I can get on. Off to Atlanta I went.

The impracticle upshot of this is that the flight from Atlanta to Minneapolis is still not scheduled to leave until 10:55 local time. The same flight I would have caught if I had taken the later flight in Boston. So here I am working on my laptop in Atlanta for at least the next hour. Anyway..I hope everyone else there made it back without this much trouble.