Day 300

After an exhausting long day and a seriously delayed flight I finally made it back to KC.  I left Champaign this morning at 7am.  When Rick dropped me off at the airport he commented that he thought might flight might get canceled because there were big storms headed to O'hare.  Sure enough, as I was boarding my flight out of Champaign I got a voicemail saying my connecting flight was canceled.  Not cool.  I seriously considered just getting back off the plane and staying home for the weekend, but the flight attendant assured me I'd be able to get on the next flight out.

I arrived in Chicago and got in line to talk to the ticket agent about a new flight.  Turns out the problem was big storms in KC, not Chicago, and they had (allegedly) canceled all flights to KC out of Chicago for the whole day.  This is was the very rude, not nice ticket agent told me.  She booked me on a flight to Houston that didn't leave until 5pm, where I would catch another flight to KC getting in at 7pm.  Really, not cool.  When I asked if I could get on stand by for an earlier flight directly from Chicago to KC she said there were none (liar).  I was super frustrated at this point, but the ticket agent obviously wasn't going to be helpful, so I decided I'd just go to my new gate and ask someone there.

When I got to the new gate there was a huge line to talk to the ticket agent.  I figured I had 11 hours to wait until my next flight, so I might as well stand in line. As the line moved forward I could tell this ticket agent was just as haggard and swamped with people trying to get on flights, so my hopes were not high.  Just as I was next in line a new agent came out and summoned me to her computer.  I explained the situation and that I just wanted to double check that there were absolutely no earlier flights.  She tappity tap tapped (isn't it weird how airline ticket people always look like their typing 4 pages worth of stuff, you'd think it would just be a couple of clicks to look at the flight) and said the most wonderful words I'd heard  all week... "Here's your ticket on a direct flight to KC that leaves at noon."  I was in shock.  I asked her again to make sure I'd heard correctly... yep, direct flight, leaves in two hours, not standby.  I seriously wanted to hug this lady (and go back and scream at the other mean lady).

So for the next two hours, I hung out and got a ton of studying done, shared my phone charger with some guy and boarded my fight to KC