6 hours stuck in JFK. Thanks to Delta Air Lines.

And the rant continues...

As predicted yesterday I missed my connection from JFK to Boston. When I arrived here this morning after a really crappy flight I learned that all morning flights to Boston were booked out so I've only got a confirmed seat for 12:55 p.m. - 6 hours after I was originally supposed to leave JFK!

Of course I got a stand-by ticket for the flight at 8:25 a.m., but that one was full. Now I'm on another stand-by ticket for 9:55 a.m. but I'd say my chances are slimmer than slim. Not even sure whether I should bother with the subsequent stand-bys, I might as well just grab two hours of sleep and be done with it.

Anyway, since one is supposed to take away something from each experience here are my lessons learned for the future:

• Don't fly Delta Air Lines. Never.
• Book non-stop flights even if it costs a little more. Always.
• Skip the plane and take the train. Whenever possible.

By the way, thanks to the awesome T-Mobile hotspot here it has only taken me about 20 minutes and 8 tries to get connected. Yeah!

P.S. Is 9:30 a.m. (EST) too early to drink beer? I mean, it's a Saturday after all and it's almost 4 p.m. in Austria, right?

The one where I almost missed my flight

"E6 is the seat, not the gate" - this thought sent a shot of adrenaline through my body at 3:40 p.m. today. Because that's when I realized that I was supposed to be at gate E1, not E6, for my 3:42 p.m. flight to San Francisco. I guess that kind of thing happens when you're busy catching up with your e-mail (thanks to the free Wifi at Portland International Airport) and at the same time desperately scrambling to find an affordable accommodation in San Francisco on short notice.

Anyway, I packed up my laptop and started running, almost losing my boarding pass in the process. Sprinting along the E gates I see that the E1 waiting area is empty already except for one employee who looks like she is about to close the gate. In what seems like slow-motion to me I run towards her, frantically waving my arms. Breathless I arrive at the hate, only being able to nod my head when she says "You must be Christoph". The flight attendant waiting at the door of the plane also greets me with "I was about to start looking for you!". Literally seconds after I board the plane the doors are closed and we start moving towards the runway.

That was a close one!

So much to do, so little time

Only 36 more hours before we get on that train to Munich Airport... And
in 2 1/2 days we're already going to be in Bejing!! :-)

Tomorrow will be a pretty busy day as I still need to buy my sleeping
bag as I wasn't able to find a suitable one while I was in Vienna these
past two days. Plus thanks to the f****** moron at outdoorversand.at
(who sent the Nortland Kailash 70+10 backpacks we ordered to another
customer and now we won't get it in time) we still need to buy a
backpack tomorrow. There are two Nortland stores which are relatively
close by where we hope to find good backpacks. I rang one up 10min
before they called it a day and they had one Kailash 70+10 still in
stock. However they received a large shipment today which they haven't
unboxed so I'm quite optimistic about getting the ones we want tomorrow.
One way or another it's another thing that I'll have to take care off
and I'm not too happy about it. *grml*

On another note I tested out my iso-matrace half an hour ago and it's
really quite confortable, which it of course should be given that I
spent €60 on it...