Wednesday

A day of travel, and a frustrating one at that. Everything went smoothly on the front end. I left my hotel just before 8am, drove uneventfully to DFW, fueled and turned in my rental car, checked in and boarded my flight to Chicago, all on time and without incident. I deplaned at O'Hare on schedule, grabbed some lunch, bought a pair of shoes (a planned expedition at Johnston & Murphy), and headed to the United Club for what I thought would be about 2.5 hours. There I processed several emails (always an available task) and got some reading done. After a while, however, the messages started to trickle in about delays to my flight to Springfield, beginning with 45 minutes, due to a delay of our aircraft getting in from it's previous trip (Traverse City, MI). By the time everything played out, that 45 minutes had stretched into 3.5 hours, and it was after 9:00 before I was in my car and headed home. United Airlines did not make me a happy customer today.

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