Weekend trip

This weekend, Brad an I went to Baltimore and D.C. to visit my brother and his fiancee. I have lots of pictures, but you'll have to settle for words today because our camera cord is nowhere to be found! The trip was fantastic, and definitely one of those weekends we'll talk about for years to come because of two key factors:

1) The heat. We did all the touristy stuff on Saturday, when our nation's capital set a temperature record of 98 degrees. D.C. has NO SHADE (no tall buildings in the areas we went) and I can truly say I have never been that hot in my life. Everyone made fun of me for re-applying my SPF 45 sunscreen about 20 times, but I must've sweated it away because got burned anyway. Stupid German complexion! My brother and I actually lived in Baltimore for about 8 years growing up, so we'd both been on field trips to all the landmarks, but Brad had never seen any of it. Due to the sunscreen that kept dripping into his eyes, he saw about 60% of what he intended.

2) The airlines. Our flight left Baltimore at 12:41 p.m. "Left." It didn't actually leave. We sat on the runway due to a mechanical problem and then got dumped back at the gate. Northwest couldn't get ahold of their mechanic, who was at Dulles (I'm not making this up), so our plane never got fixed. We ended up getting on the next available flight, which was approximately eight hours later. That flight was delayed two hours due to weather. When all was said and done, it took us 13 hours to take a one-hour flight, and we got to know the Baltimore Washington International Airport better than we'd ever dreamed.

Brad blames Northwest (Northworst, as one of our fellow travelers from Minneapolis told us), but if you recall, the same thing happened to me this winter on a different airline. Two out of the three flights I've taken in 2008 have been cancelled and have resulted in entire days of wasted time.

I don't pretend to understand the airlines, and I know many of these problems are not their fault. For five years, I worked in an industry that had a bad rap, and the misconceptions that some people had about it it were ridiculous. But that doesn't make being stuck in an airport for longer than it would take me to DRIVE from Maryland any more pleasant. I'm sorry, but that track record is enough to make me think twice about taking a vacation that requires air travel.