Minneapolis, we have a problem.

Take a look at this picture. Does it look like the inside of a modern Airbus A330-200 Aircraft? No, I didn't think so either. But how the hell did I end up in a hotel room in Minneapolis?

Well, you see it all started when I jinxxed myself by setting my out of office message in Outlook to state that a trip from the US West Coast to the UAE took about 24 hours. Right there I knew I'd tempted fate.

So we're just getting ready to land in Minneapolis, when the plane loses it's radar. We have *no* radar, and the weather in MSP is pretty horrid. So, the pilots get on the overhead and announce that we're diverting to beautiful podunk Duluth Minnesota. BUT, get this. You know how when you're trying to sleep, the pilots come on in their loudest voice and try to opine about just that right hue of the mountains so far off in the distance and across two rows of people on the other side of the plane that you really couldn't give a rat's gallbladder? But he just keeps droning on and on about how lovely the colors are this time of year and what a shame that global warming is melting the snow and how he chipped a tooth when he was 4 years old on that very mountain top chasing some rabid goat. You can't sleep, right? Well when he made this announcement, the guy did it as QUIETLY as possible. Nobody questioned him, nobody made a ruckus or even a fruckus. It wasn't until the flight attendant said something in passing to another passenger that we all finally heard what the pilot was NOT trying to say - we were flying without radar, into the edge of a storm, into Duluth.

Well we were happy, to say the least.

So we land in Duluth, and get a mechanic on there. Now the biggest plane this place has seen in it's lifetime is like a 75 seater - and we've got a chunky 757-200 with almost 200 people on board, just sitting on the tarmac. The mechanic was quite sure that he could get it fixed within half an hour, and then surely we'd be on our way.

An hour later was more like it. But that wasn't the good part. See, an hour delay was accounted for in my itinerary. What WASN'T counted on was the control tower at MSP airport being struck and subsequently taken out by quite a precise lightning strike. Yes, the entire MSP airport, inbound and outbound was shut down.

It was that time that we were finally taken off of the plane, and the two gate agents for Northwest HID. One of them came out to see the line of 200 passengers, said that she was going to go help get bags off of the plane, and that nobody would help us for 30 minutes. An overhead announcement came on after she fled, saying that there would be busses showing up SOMETIME TONIGHT to drive us into Minneapolis, and that we'd PROBABLY be there by morning. Such confidence these people had!

So anyway, I get on the phone, and can you believe it, but there's NO FREAKIN' SEATS on ANY NorthWest/KLM flights into the UAE at all through and including Sunday. So I wait on the phone - with the nicest guy (definitely a bright spot in this ordeal) and it takes him an HOUR to get me on a flight. So I'm on my flight from MSP -> Amsterdam tomorrow at 7PM, then catch a shuttle from Amsterdam to Brussels (which is like spitting distance - think Portland to Seattle, or Palm Springs to LA) which I get *brunch*. Yes, they list the meal as "Brunch" for a 40 minute flight. Then finally I'm on Ethiad Airways (the guy hadn't heard of them at all - I only had, because they're one of the official airlines of the UAE. That, and I'm a bit of a geek) that gets me in Saturday at 11:10PM.

So, with that set, I grab a car (no busses have shown up STILL, and it's almost 4 hours into the ordeal) and let 3 other people ride in with me. We have a cordial conversation the entire way. I mean, what's a computer geek like me, an Energy Company Lobbyist (think Enron and Cheney's Secret Energy Task Force), an auto mechanic collision specialist with a thing for insurance companies, and the VP of a large PR firm all have in common? Well, we started with the shitty way our day's turned out, of course!

So it's 11:30PM and I'm sitting in my hotel room in Minneapolis. I've going to catch some zzz's, maybe go over to Mall of America for a couple of hours, and then show up at the airport for my flight tomorrow night. What an intersting trip it's been so far! ;)