My Trip to TGI Fridays

Brian here. Just wanted to share the story of the weekend, involving me trying to head into a snowstorm to make our friend Kent's wedding.

Friday dawned sunny and bright in America's Finest City. Team Gaze headed to the airport at 7am to drop me off, and I breezed thru security and settled in with a coffee and 2 newspapers for 9am for my trip to Dallas, and then on to Charleston. I was excited about the trip, but a little bummed to be leaving the family, plus such nice weather, to sit in a Texas airport for 4 hours waiting for my connection. Either way, the wedding in South Carolina was going to be fun, and the prospect of early-morning cocktails and the smell of jet fuel always remind me of new adventures and good times.

Upon boarding the plane (on schedule at this point), I was told that the weather in Dallas was 33 degrees and overcast, and that DFW had received 9 inches of snow the night before. No biggie, I thought, it will be fun to look at while I kill time.

The flight was uneventful, except for the ridiculous pressure change that just kicked my behind due to a cold/sinus infection I'm fighting thru. Once we landed, I was amazed at all the snow. After de-planing, I looked up at the big board and saw maybe a dozen flights into Atlanta had been cancelled. Not a good omen for travel to the South.

Either way, I had 4 hours to move 10 gates, so after reading for an hour or so, I headed over to TGI Fridays in Terminal B and had an uneventful lunch of boneless buffalo wings and an, ahem, Southwestern Wedge salad, which was basically a piece of iceberg with some spicy ranch dressing and corn. Yummers (ashley loves that word for some reason...)

Heading back to the gate, I passed about 90 minutes reading some more, and when there still was no plane at the gate 30 minutes before boarding, I decided to double-check the gate assignment. Turns out they had moved the gate without me hearing about it (this is a trend with us in Texas airports), so I hustled to the new gate, two train stops over, but with a breezy 15 minutes until the scheduled boarding.

When I got to the new gate, the plane was there, and everything seemed to be in order. It was then that my friends in South Carolina started texting me, saying it was starting to look really ominous, and that it could start snowing at any minute. No problem, I thought, I'll be there in 2 hours. Boy was I wrong.

First off, the plane had no crew for at least 45 minutes. We ended up boarding around 7pm, 40 minutes later than the scheduled takeoff. Upon boarding, we were told that there was a problem with a light in the bathroom, and that maintenance had to come take a look at it. Despite the fact that the plane volunteered to "hold it" for the duration of the flight, the captain said it was an FAA issue, and they were grounded until it could be changed.

45 minutes later (it's now close to 8pm Dallas time, and I'm going on 11 hours away from home) a maintenance guy showed up and changed 1 lightbulb- elapsed time: 2 minutes. By now everyone on the plane had heard through the grapevine that it was dumping snow in Charleston, 2 inches in an hour, which is pretty unheard-of for that area. My friends called off his night out, fearful of roads being closed. Despite that setback, Wisconsin Bob was still ready to come pick me up and hit the bars, so I was optimistic as we started taxiing.

After taxiing for 10 minutes, and get into the queue to take off, the plane turns around.

All flights into Charleston canceled, we're heading back to the gate.

So now the whole plane is scrambling, booking hotels (airlines don't pay when weather is the reason for the cancellation, I found), and upon deboarding (a dejected scene as I've ever seen at an airport) queuing up to re-book flights the next day (Saturday). I am sick as a dog at this point, and unless the 30 people in front of me in line are booking something besides the first flight out in the morning (not likely), I am going to miss the wedding.

As it becomes more and more likely that this will be the case, I spy a flight (which turned out to be a DB Cooper-esque MD80- what kind of crackerjack airline still has those in its fleet?) back to San Diego leaving at midnight, itself delayed over 2 hours. I beg and plead with the ticket lady, and by some miracle she finds me a seat on the flight as a "trip in vain" passenger. We touch down at 1am San Diego time, and $30 later, I open our front door and collapse in bed.

We then spent 2 days laying around the house, all of us sick as can be, only now are we starting to come out of it

As the absurdity of that Friday became clear, I realized that because of the weather, I had the unique privilege of effectively spending $300 on boneless wings at TGI Fridays in the Dallas airport.

On the plus side, the weather has been absolutely amazing- today hit 76 degrees, and with it a very light Santa Ana wind, plus great surf, which was great at clearing out my sinuses. Just wonderful, aside from that disaster of a day in Dallas. I wish we had some pictures for this post, though, sorry. Soon enough...