Nevertheless, I got to Arkansas without a problem, prepared my talk that night, was getting ready to do my presentation the next day, and we had a tornado evacuation at the hotel (with sirens and everything inside the hotel)  right before my talk was scheduled. There were some very official looking men in the lobby of the hotel looking very concerned, it was really scary.

Long story short, we survived that and onward & upward … But by the time we got through that, the schedules were all mixed up.

I get to my conference room and it’s empty. I leave and come back and there is a tech guy there, helping me get the audio-visual presentation up and working. People begin to arrive, everything is looking good, and so I begin the talk and the microphone isn’t working. The tech guy finally gets it turned on and it’s creating this pulsing noise (which continued all the way through the 90-minute talk) and then the visual of my audio-visual presentation goes on the fritz.

Not happy.

By that stage, all I want to do is pack up and head for home, which is what I did. But of course all expenses paid meant conference organizers did the cheap thing of booking me on a flight home to Atlanta, which required me to fly west before I eventually flew east - on American. And this is Day Two of this American “crisis.”

I had already flown one stretch of my trip before ending up in Dallas and was so exhausted. American wouldn’t cancel my flight, they just kept kicking the departure time out by 15 minutes & 15 minutes & 15 minutes & 15 minutes. They moved us to Gate C8, which apparently is where they had all the ‘hopefuls’ wait because they had (what seemed like) a decoy plane just sitting there & not doing anything.  I met another couple the next morning on their way home from Mexico (supposedly) who ended up at the same gate before their flight was canceled.

Our plane wasn’t arriving that night either. I was too tired to think, it was inching towards 10 at night, I was not knowledgeable about what was happening, and the flight crew could only say they were ‘optimistic’ about the plane showing up that night and if I moved my flight to the next day, it would probably be worse. I didn’t know what to do, but I ended up talking American into giving me a free hotel room that night and rescheduling my flight for the next morning.

I was so exhausted, I was just fit to be tied the next morning. American acted like they had everything covered when they gave me the hotel voucher, but they gave me bad information on getting back to the airport. So I was stranded again at the hotel with bad customer service there, too, and had to do some quick talking to get to the airport and make my plane.

When I finally got to the airport the next morning, they actually moved our gate five times while we were waiting. And when the woman behind the desk came on to apologize for the delay, she (in spite of herself) just broke down and started laughing.

Nobody else was laughing.

I felt like I was on an episode of “Survivor” - and looked like it, too.

To conclude a really great trip … we had a really small plane coming back, with a one-seater and two-seater on opposite sides of the aisle and confronted what the flight attendant relayed as “the perfect storm” over ou r airport. We ended up in heavy, heavy wind & storm clouds and as the very seasoned flight attended said, it was like a ride at Six Flags. She was freaked. The pilot seemed freaked. I swear I thought we were going to crash.  The pilot once or twice flew out of the clouds, seemingly just to steady things. But then had to ultimately dive back in. The clouds were dark,  the inside of the plane went dark and the plane seemed a little out of control. My legs were like jelly when I got off.

By the way, on the shuttle to the hotel in Dallas (the night I was stranded) , everyone had their war stories, some people were stranded for three or four days (again, just doing a connection in Dallas and getting trapped there), one couple had just sat on the runway in Reno for 90 minutes earlier that day, had ultimately had an engine (the left one) started manually at takeoff - hey, at least the right one worked, right? - …and I asked the husband … did that concern you at all? He was like ‘No, we were just happy to at least be up in the air” ….. (conditions were that bad)  And … of course …. for all their efforts, they ended up stranded in Dallas too, as a result of a connection.

What I learned from this is that all “platform building” opportunities aren’t good platform building opportunities. It’s important to be selective, ask good questions beforehand – and do your research. Also, handle your own arrangements and get reimbursed.

Jill