Travel Disaster!

Well, my first experience in flying overseas was supposed to start today....but, unfortunately weather really ruined that plan. My flight was scheduled to leave St. Louis, MO today at 2:30pm. I was supposed to go from St. Louis to Chicago then stay on the same plane and go on the San Francisco. Then leave San Francisco at 1:30 am to head to Hong Kong, then Taipei. So where exactly am I now? ST. LOUIS!?!?!

Now I don't live in St. Louis, I live two and a half hours from St. Louis so I left bright and early this morning to get to the airport. I got there around 12:30 and I was ready to go, the weather was beautiful, no problems. I go to my gate and start reading a book, then at around 1:45 they announce that there are mechanical problems with the plane and they are trying to get them fixed...20 minutes go by....another announcement, still trying to fix the problem. Twenty more minutes, they have tow a new plane to the gate and it will be about another half hour. Half an hour goes by, "well, it will be about 15 more minutes.". Finally we start boarding over an hour late. By this time a pesky little storm has rolled into the Chicago area. We are told we will wait about half an hour, then another half an hour, then another hour, then another half an hour. Of course they gave us the option to get off the plane if we wanted. Finally, they started boarding again saying we would take off in 15 minutes. Then the call of doom came....the planes that were re-routed to St. Louis that should have gone to Chicago now had priority. Estimated time of take-off....four hours!

So here goes everyone off the plane and into a big line. It is now about 7pm and my options of flights to make it to San Francisco in time are gone. That means making my flight to Taiwan are gone. I must admit, I hit freak out mode and even shed some tears. Of all times for this to happen with a flight, today was not the day! After about an hour or so of waiting in line I finally got my flight rescheduled. My new itinerary is really not very cool at all. I now go from St. Louis straight to San Francisco...that is the good part. The bad part, it leaves at 10:15 am and gets there at 12:30pm. My flight to Taiwan, which I had to reschedule and pay a fee, isn't until 1:30 am!!! What in the world is there to do for that long in an airport?? The other really cool thing about today, I wasn't allowed to get my luggage off of the flight that was delayed so long. I have to hope that my luggage arrives in San Francisco tomorrow about two hours after I arrive!

I hope this isn't setting the mood for the trip!