It's about the journey, not the destination.

Because everyone likes a good travel yarn...

Let me start here by setting the time frame. I left home at 4:45 in the afternoon and finally arrived at the hotel to sleep at 5:30 the next morning. And this is to go to Florida, not Europe.

There was, of course, a huge storm on the east coast, and it was at its most intense at the time our flight was supposed to leave. The Continental website said the aircraft was already in Newark (we flew out of Newark because I was coming from Philly and my daughter from New York), so I wasn't really worried. We got to the airport and they announced that the plane was not, in fact, in Newark and that the departure time was delayed from 8:45 to 9:25.

The plane arrived at 9 and it seemed to take forever to empty, and then to load. Apparently, the same thing was going on outside because the luggage wasn't getting put on the plane in any kind of expeditious fashion (honestly, I really felt for the luggage handlers who were out in sheets of rain and 30 mile per hour winds). This resulted in our losing our supposed takeoff slot and we sat at the gate for a while, then lumbered out to the end of the runway for what we were told would be a 30 minute delay.

Fortunately or not, I was not wearing a watch or keeping track of the time, but after a while they announced that the winds had changed and we had to go to the other end of the airport and wait for an additional 45 minutes. All this time, we kept thinking the plane was moving because the wind was blowing it around so hard.

Eventually, we took off, which was way too entertaining due to the strong crosswinds that bounced us around throughout. It was somewhere around 11or 11:30PM at this point. They didn't tell us that they were routing us completely around the storm and over the Atlantic Ocean. I only noticed it when we came into Florida over Daytona Beach when we were bound for Tampa, all the way on the other side of the state. Total flying time was around 4 hours rather than the scheduled 3.

I used to travel a lot on business and have encountered most of the normal horror stories along the way, and so I'm pretty stoic about all this stuff and was just happy that we'd gotten there. Let's just say that my traveling companion did not share my outlook. So everything going on is happening with a vague kind of whining sound in the background. Airports at 3AM are strange places. There were a surprising number of people there- all gathered in pockets and waiting, I'm guessing, for ticket windows to open in the morning (why?).

The rental car counter was closed because it was 3 AM and when we found the one place that was open (the return desk), our reservation had been lost because, and this is a killer, it was now a day later. It was now 3:30AM.

They resurrected our reservation, we loaded the car and took off for the hotel. Not much traffic that time of night or morning or whatever. We got to the hotel at 4AM, unloaded the car, and there was a bag missing. Yep, left it at the rental car counter because it was 3:30 AM and our minds had wandered off somewhere. I call the car place and fortunately they had it and had not moved it to the dreaded airport lost and found yet. I said I'd be right there.

Well, maybe not right there because out hotel reservation also disappeared because it was 4AM. They resurrected that one too, but were unable to make room keys so the security guard let us into our room. I guess that was fine as long as we didn't leave, but of course I did have to leave for the airport to get the bag, which I did, uttering a few spirited 4-letter f-words in the process (in our family we always had to distinguish between the 4 and 6 letter f-words because my father often used the 6-letter version that ends with 'em').

So back to the airport, got my bag, and back to the hotel, where the key machine was now working again. I should note that there was a lot more traffic at 5AM than at 4AM. I also passed a bicyclist whom I had passed near Tampa the first time through who was now closing in on Clearwater. Finally got to bed at 5:45. I was tempted to stay awake until 6:15 so I could have been up for 24 hours straight, but decided in the end that I'd prefer the extra half hour of sleep.