Air Travel Is Both Fun and Rational!!!

I'm back from my trip to the Western History Association, a place where a person, say myself for instance, can give a scholarly paper and have a man wearing fringed buckskin in the audience. This will be the first of a few posts on St. Louis.

Neither my flight to or from St. Louis went well. On the way there, I misunderstood the whole gel/liquid carryon thing. I needed these things and so when they stopped me in security, which was so much fun, I had to go back out and check in my backpack. Whatever. But when I get to St. Louis and am going through my stuff, I see that I had left a fork at the bottom of my pack. That they didn't care about at all. So they were freaking out over a jar of moisturizing lotion but completely ignored the one thing in my pack that could actually kill a person. Got to love the TSA!!!!

On the way back, I had to fly through Chicago, thanks to a lovely itinerary change. This was annoying but OK until we landed and then had to sit on the ground for an hour and a half because their were some computer problems and no planes could leave the gate. I therefore missed my flight. I could have lived with this, after all computers generally make things so much easier and sometimes shit happens, but United would not pay for all of my hotel. It was there computers that were screwy but I still had to pay half of my room. This is totally wrong. They say they only pay for full rooms if it is a mechanical problem with the plane. How this is a different from a mechanical problem with the whole system, I don't know. But I do know it cost me $40. Bastards.