...and thank you for flying American Airlines (in)direct to Indianapolis

Ok, this is going to be a long one so belly up to the desk. My flight out of Dallas was scheduled for 10 am so like a good girl, I got up early, checked to make sure my flight was still on time and then checked for the weather forecast back home. Oh, crap. It was only 7 am and we were already under a tornado warning in Indiana. Looking at the weather map I saw that the storm front started across northern Texas and crossed Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. Obviously this was a concern for me. As a teenager I flew from Japan to Hong Kong and our plane was hit by lightening and one of our engines was knocked out. I guess you could say I'm familiar with what happens in the air during storms.

Due to my obvious aversion towards using Dallas's esteemed taxi service, I called a shuttle company to come pick me up at the hotel and ferry me to the airport. He was supposed to get there at 8:15...he arrived at 7:40am. Ok, my morning is not going as smoothly as I would have liked.

Have you ever been to the Dallas/Fort Worth airport? It's huge. I've been to a lot of airports in my life and I don't think I have ever been to one that felt as spread out as this one. It was quite incredible. They have a lot of people pass through their doors everyday and they have VERY thorough security screeners. They actually found and removed my chapstick, lipsticks and Epi-pen from my purse. Evidently they are considered to be "liquids" and needed to be secured in a clear 1 quart ziplock baggie. I did have a gallon bag, but that wasn't good enough. It had to be a 1 quart bag. Have you ever heard of anything so crazy???? The only time lipstick is a liquid is when it is boiled. Fortunately they (as well as everyone else in Texas) was very polite and helpful about it. But still, my morning was not running as smoothly as I would have liked. I like to be able to anticipate these things before I travel. For example, on Sunday before I left for the airport I went through my purse and confiscated hand lotion, sun screen, and not one, but two pocket knives. I have no idea how I got my hands on 2 knives, but there they were.

Ok, so on I go. I'm sitting there waiting for them to board when they finally announce that we will be late because our plane is coming from Chicago and weather was creating problems there. Ok, so 10 am got moved to 10:30. Ok, still not smooth, but I am going with the flow.

Did you know that AA charges you for a bag of pretzels? Yeah, I didn't know either until getting on the flight. The only thing you get free is a headache and a ginger ale. I am sitting in the very back of the plane. I am so far back in the plane that I am sitting immediately in front of the flight attendants. Due to this little fact I got to know Janelle, the flight attendant, very well. Janelle and Jamie were just completing the beverage round when I saw Janelle hurry towards the front of the plane. Ok, not a big deal I thought at the time. But here is where the story gets very interesting. Within a minute of her sprinting to the front, the plane takes a nose dive. I don't mean that we began to descend, I mean we began to descend fast. I looked at the guy sitting next to me as we both gripped the arm rests and he said, "I think we are going down." I asked the guy in front of me and the one to my left where our nearest exits were. I was that concerned. Within another 30 seconds of the nose dive the pilot announced that we had smoke in the cabin along with a strange odor and we needed to land ASAP. If the nose dive didn't grab out attention, the plane's banking/rolling left to right sure did. I'm not kidding...I looked out the window at one point and saw the wing of the plane pointed directly to the ground....then he went to the other side....and back again to the right. Have I mentioned that I have motion sickness? I learned later from Janelle that we were descending hot (fast, for everyone not associated with airplanes) and we had to bank to slow us down. Yowza. We went from 33,000 feet to ground in a matter of a few minutes. Janelle told me later that she really thought the oxygen masks were going to deploy because we were falling so quickly.

If you fall out of the sky between Dallas and Indiana, guess where you land? Memphis! As soon as we de-planed we were told it would be a few minutes before the mechanics could check it out. Well, 4 hours later we were still sitting there. At one point a traveler getting on another plane asked me what happened. I told him. He asked if we were going to or coming back from Dallas and I told him we were returning. What he said next caught my attention: he had been on a flight from Dallas 2 days ago and he reported smelling and seeing smoke, but no one did anything. I asked him where it was coming from and he said it was coming from the front, right side of the plane...that's the same place our smoke was coming from! What are the chances that this was a different plane?

At 4 pm they announce that we will be unable to continue this flight so another plane is being brought in from Dallas to take us the rest of the way. Well, we were supposed to start boarding at 7 pm, but we are still sitting there at 8 pm. The plane finally did arrive. Minutes later they told us to have boarding passes ready, and then guy working the gate announces that they have a problem with this plane also. We all thought he was kidding, but he wasn't. Evidently some of the gauges weren't working and they needed repaired before we could take off.

Finally, we are in the air again after waiting 8 freakin' hours in Memphis. Remember that storm I told you about in the beginning of this infinitely long blog? Yeah, well it was gathering steam while we cooled our jets in Memphis. Take off was easy breezy, but because of the storm we couldn't fly directly north to Indy, we had to go north and east and approach them the east. The last 20-30 minutes of the flight were the worst I have ever spent in a plane. The wind was horrible, the constant lightening was horrible. I was soooo sick. We would just drop without warning and be blown this way or that way. When we finally did touch down, our plane was being blown off the runway. Evidently there were tornadoes reported to the north and south of us while we were flying.

Ok, so I'm not quite done yet. Do you remember the photo at the top of this posting with the 2 blue bottles of Skyy vodka? When we loaded onto the fixed plane in Memphis we were all sitting in the same seats and Janelle was once again sitting right behind me. Before take off I mentioned that I could really use a drink...and I especially wanted vodka. Well, before take off she slipped me a bottle and said "you look like a cran-apple girl, am I right?" Well, I wasn't about to argue with her! The guy next to me got a bloody mary as did the guy in front of him. Guess what the rest of the plane got? Ginger ale. After she finished the drink service for the rest of the plane I found that she had slipped me ANOTHER bottle of vodka. Thanks, Janelle!

Ok, so now you are caught up on my horrible trip to and from Dallas. Out of all of my travels, this was by far the worst trip I have been on. Unfortunately I don't think there is anything I could have done to make it better. You know what the truly sucky part is? I have to go back in 2 months!!!