Bring something to drink for godssake!

On the plus side (notice I manage to find one positive thing in each of my posts?), my car started this morning with much greater ease than it did when I drove home from my parents' house last night, so I guess I'm out of the woods on that problem. Now I just have to manage to ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss

Good news, though, my bags arrived, in fine shape, about four hours ago, at 3 am. (Yes, I told them it was okay to deliver it that late as I was wide awake, and knew I would definitely need a shave this morning. I last shaved approximately 60 hours ago.)

But then, in the middle of a Kurt Angle speech on Raw is War about 9:45, I passed out cold on the couch. Fortunately, I woke up five or ten minutes later and immediately got up and went to bed.

So, I walk up to the desk and ask one of the two gate agents what the deal was. Well, I guess I was really on top of things, because the gate agent I asked actually didn't know about the delay yet herself, although her coworker was at that moment picking up the microphone to announce the always-dreaded "mechanical delay". Her announcement said that it would take the mechanics an hour just to give us an estimate on the departure time. (Visions of the movie Airplane: "Can't you take a guess?" "Not for another two hours." "You can't take a guess for another two hours?")

As you might imagine, by this point there was quite a line forming behind me, and boy was I glad I was at the front. The gate agent quickly realized that there was no possible way for me to make my connection in Minneapolis (52 minutes, remember?) and my connecting flight, scheduled to arrive at Dulles at 1:14am was the last flight of the night. So... she booked me on the next available, non-stop, United flight! Oh thank God! The last thing I needed was to have to take TWO more flights. Non-stop flights make all the difference in the world. So, I hike across the center of busy LAX, past the pretty restaurant, or whatever that thing is, over to the United terminal. I was please to find out that, while the Northwest flight was going to be quite full, my United flight was practically empty. In fact, it was as empty a flight as I've seen in years, with the notable exception of our flight from Hong Kong to Ho Chi Minh City. I had the whole row to myself, as did everyone else in the last 10 or so rows, at least the rows that actually had anybody in them at all. So, we were able to stretch out, which was nice. And, on top of all this, the flight landed a half-hour earlier than my original Northwest flight was scheduled to.

But of course, the one big catch in all this, was that the Northwest agent said they would not take my baggage off the plane. (Which is odd, from a security standpoint. I thought the airlines get a little antsy transporting luggage whose owners suddenly decided to take a different plane. In fact, our flight from Hong Kong to LAX was delayed today (yesterday? day before yesterday? who the hell knows at this point!) for that very same reason. There was a group of 20 people travelling together, and three of them had passport problems and couldn't fly, so they had to find all 20 people's luggage, unload it all, separate out the 3 people's luggage, then load the other 17 back on the plane. Sheesh.)

But, I put my faith in Northwest's baggage handling system, because, on balance, I'd much rather spend tonight in my own bed without my luggage, than in a Minneapolis hotel room with it.

So, there you have it. Now it's 2:00am, I've been awake for over 30 hours, not counting little naps on airplanes, and I'm sitting here reading our site. I uploaded the large format pics from day 12 and day 13. (Oh, it's nice to have a fast, reliable internet connection after a week in Hanoi!)

Lars, we're getting quite a response from the dramatic cliffhanger at the end of Day 13. We should try to get Day 14 up as soon as possible. Unfortunately, people obviously know we survived our ordeal, so part of the surprise is ruined. Oh well.