Prologue-Further Disaster

Well it's still the 1st morning of my vacation and it's already an unmitigated disaster. I'm sitting here in the Newport News airport lounge wondering when the hell I will ever get out of here. Actually the disaster started last night when I tried to get a ride to the airport from Uber or lyft and nobody would take my claim for 5 days. So I then called a cab company and they agreed to pick me up at 5:45 am. Then at 5:30 this morning, they called me and said they could be there at 6. With my plane leaving at 7, that was just too narrow a window. So I drove myself to the airport and parked my car in the lot. My car will be there for 9 days so it's going to cost me over $60. 

Then I checked in for my flight, we boarded the plane, we taxied back from the terminal and on to the runway. We had to go back to the gate because there's an air valve problem. That led to an hour of standing in line trying to get rebooted. 

As I sit here, we have now been delayed 3 and a 1/2 hours, as another airplane part needed to be flown in from Charlotte. Finally the airline decided to just scrap the flight and replace it with a different aircraft. So now I've been rebooked to Charlotte to Chicago and finally to Seattle and I'm hoping to land in Seattle 9 hours later than I arrived. Of course I'd already brought baseball tickets for tonight that are now worth Jack squat. So the trip is already off to an absolute nightmare of a scenario, now I'm just hoping and praying to get to Seattle tonight and have a full Saturday there tomorrow.