Perils of Paul

Pauline has nothing on me. I missed the storms that kept John Reuning overnight in Philly on Monday by deciding to leave DC early. But that turned out to be a teaser. Coming back to RDU from Denver was payback for the easy trip I had on Monday.
John, Megan and I were all leaving Denver at about 1 – 2 pm on Friday. Interestingly, we were all on different airlines with different connecting airports. John was on US Airways and heading back through Philly. Megan on United would change in Chicago. I was on American and thus doomed to fly through DFW.
But it was leaving Denver that was the problem — for me at least.
We went to our separate flights. Mine changed gates a couple of times as the rain outside turned to hail. Even at that our loading was only delayed by about 20 minutes and I had plenty of transfer time planned in for DFW.
Once in the plane and having pulled onto the tarmac, things were not so smooth. The hail returned as did lightning. We pulled into the deicing lane and sat. Then air traffic control had us turn around and head to a different runway. Repeat this four times.
To make us feel better while we waited, they showed us the second Bridget Jones movie. Even though Helen Fielding was one of the authors of the screen play, it was sad to watch for anyone who could still remember the first Bridget Jones film. Despite what Roger Ebert wrote in his review, this Jones is contrived all the way through and over Hollywooded throughout. Knowing that we were aimless driving around the runways of Denver didn’t improve the film.
Hours and I mean hours later, we took off. To avoid the storms, we went in directions far from the normal flight plan. Then the pilot came on and started talking about Tulsa.
We were out of fuel or nearly so from our tours of Denver in the rain. Stuck on the plane whilst in Tulsa then everyone in a panic about connections as we aproached DFW.
We finally arrived at DFW at 8 pm CDT. Only one flight to RDU was left for the night. Leaving DFW at 9:30 CDT and arriving at RDU after 1 am EDT.
Even though a large and somewhat friendly woman broke in line as the people from our flight were frantically rebooking, I did get a flight back. My seat the last row window. Only there is no window for the last row.
The plane was full and as we waited the line-breaker found me and wanted to talk about our previous flight. The David Sedaris story from the current New Yorker was speaking to the evil side of my brain. I managed to control myself and was lucky that she was given a seat near the front.
The flight from DFW to RDU was uneventful. We were back by 1:30 am.
Good to be home.