It seems I will get to go home a day early from the “Heartland.” I was hoping to have a down day tomorrow, but my employers can’t have me off not doing anything so they are paying more than $250 extra for me to fly home tomorrow on a different flight instead of as scheduled on Friday. Now what employers would rather piss away money for nothing just so it appears that I am not up here in Kansas City, Mo., doing nothing? Could you guess? I bet you could.
That is fine with me. Hopefully, I will be home by this time tomorrow afternoon. Although with the thunderstorms mucking up flights everywhere in the country’s midsection this week, I wouldn’t make any bets.
Speaking of T-storms, we had to shelter-in-place this morning for a tornado. I was waiting to testify and the arbitrator indicated he planned to work through lunch. The office building where the arbitration was happening had a deli on the first floor, so I went off to grab a sandwich before being called.
While downstairs in the deli I noticed the TV was showing a radar screen with a tornado that had been detected just south of downtown Kansas City. The storms were headed toward us.
Awhile later, a lady from the office where the procedures were taking place stuck her head in our conference room/waiting room and told us that we might have to take cover if a tornado warning was sounded. She told us to go to the stairways around the corner. Sure enough, a tornado warning sounded and we headed for the stairwells.
We spent about 30 minutes in the shelter as a tornado or maybe more than one darted up and down from the sky above us. Some damage was done around KC, but not in our neck of the woods. That was pretty weird. No one seemed really freaked by it, which was kind of surprising since all of the recent deadly tornadoes. One of my fellow witnesses was from up in the Northeast. I think he got a kick out of it.
Hopefully, this will be a calmer night than last night although we only had a pretty loud thunder boomer last evening. I got a pretty good video of it over downtown KC. I would embed it here but it needs some editing. I may do that tonight, once I get all packed.
Getting all packed is my cue. Time to go South, young man.
Here I sit looking out on Downtown Kansas City, Mo., on a rainy Tuesday afternoon. The weather folks say a big severe weather breakout is expected later this evening with the possibility of more tornadoes of the type that have plagued the Midwest in the past week or so such as the deadly Joplin, Mo., storm. I have to say, I don’t much like the prospect of that happening. I have been through several tornadoes, one F3 while camping near Sam Rayburn Reservoir in East Texas and it isn’t any fun whatsoever. I have also been through three hurricanes, two Category 2-3, within the last five years. I would rather take my chances with a hurricane, at least a Cat 2-3, than an F2 (I think they call it an EF scale now) or above. Tornadoes are still way more unpredictable than a hurricane. However, storm detection overall has improved.
Whether that storm warranted as many flights being cancelled and others being delayed yesterday remains a big question in my mind. Even if that is the case I am not sure why more passengers could not have been disembarked from their planes at DFW rather than sitting in the airliners for hours on end. Is there not enough room to park the aircraft? I don’t know. Surely they have plenty of those little trucks which carry ladders up to the planes, especially for the smaller airliners. Could they not have used those to get some of the passengers off? I don”t know that either. I’m sure some of the decisions are made with federal regulations in mind, and safety and just practicality perhaps.
Even so, even if American was justified in all the cancellations, delays and stranding passengers on planes yesterday at DFW, I cannot think of anything in my mind that justifies why American could not provide accurate information about the schedule changes.
I had signed up for American’s “flight notification” by text message before leaving Houston for Dallas and my connecting flight to Kansas City (Hereafter called MCI for its official aviation name.) Once planes started backing up on the DFW Tarmac, my phone buzzed every few minutes or so with the little reggae tone I had chosen for a text notification on my cell. I got sick of that little reggae beat fast. Even though the message kept showing the hour for my MCI flight becoming longer and longer in the future, the gate always stayed the same.
Once I got off the plane and after the long parade of American Super 80 aircraft whittled down some waiting for a gate, I saw my gate and it was jam packed with folks. But they weren’t waiting for a plane to MCI. No, they were waiting for a plane to LaGuardia in New York. I asked an off-duty American captain waiting in line if he knew a number I could call and talk to someone who might know where my plane was supposed to depart. The cap gave me a number, but I forgot it. I finally asked an airline employee at the gate if this was still the place to catch the MCI flight. He said, “Yeah, stick around.”
It seemed like the LaGuardia flight would never back out from the gate. I asked another American employee if the MCI flight was still scheduled for this gate, he said: “I think so.” I said, well, it looked as if I had time to catch a bite to eat and the employee agreed. So I set off to find something to help curb my voracious appetite made 10 times worse by a stressful afternoon.
As I walked along passing a few other gates, I noticed a bunch of folks ready to board another plane. The sign said: “Flight 2032.” It was my flight for KC. I still didn’t believe it because I had been told otherwise. I asked an off-duty flight attendant who ended up flying on the plane to KC if there was anyone to call that might be able to straighten all the mess out, she said: “I doubt it.” But lo and behold, this was indeed my flight.
Once we boarded, the captain apologized for all the delays all afternoon but noted that we would have a bit more of a delay as another thunderstorm required we fly around to the Texas Panhandle and take a right over the Ozarks before heading north for MCI. Remarkably, we still made the flight in a little more than 1.5 hours. Even more remarkably, during a single pass of the drink cart I ordered a vodka tonic to calm my frayed nerves and the flight attendant said, grinning, as I stuck out my debit card: “I don’t want that.” I was kind of stunned for a moment that someone from the airline would miss a chance to bill someone for $6. But then I realized the guy was performing an act of mercy. I hope this doesn’t get him in trouble. But I doubt anyone from American will read this anyway and if they do, bill me.
I hope we escape any heavy weather tonight. I got a big day ahead of me in the a.m. I also hope I have a much better trip back home, one filled less with storms and a little better performance on the part of American Airlines.
Some days it is best to just let the links do the talking. That is true, meaning, it is not intended to be a false statement. I suppose that would be the inverse of the answer from a press flak for Republican U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona in response to the senator’s comments on Planned Parenthood during last week’s federal budget debate.
Kyl claimed that abortions were “well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does,” as the womens’ health organization became the whipping boy for Republican opposition to the budget even though it is illegal for Congress to provide funding for abortions in the U.S. Just to leave the (I loathe abortion/I support the right to choose) debate for a minute, Planned Parenthood says abortions are actually only 3 percent of what the organization does. And yes, some debate that number.But Kyl substantiated Planned Parenthood’s claims by default when his flak told reporters that what the senator said “was not intended to be a factual statement.”
Let’s look at that phrase again. It “was not intended,” meaning the senator did not mean to make “a factual statement.” So, it was all said as a lie, big ol’ lie, liar, liar, pants on fire. Well if the statement from the press flak was correct and honest, then perhaps we have a rare example of a politician telling the truth although that is rather doubtful. Kyl and his office, or so it seems, could be just a tad deceitful via their double-speak.
Fly the unfriendly skies
Sen. Inhofe: I think that big X down on the runway means we can land there.
This is instead a short mention of Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, yes another Republican, and his problems with landing an airplane.
It seems Inhofe was in South Texas awhile back and as a witness put it, “Scared the crap” out of some folks fixing a runway when the 76-year-old senator hopped over a group of construction workers and six vehicles while landing his Cessna at the Cameron County Airport. The airport had a big “X” on its threshold, which perhaps Inhofe mistook for “land right here.” It could be an Oklahoma thing, or it could be some kind right-wing thing to which those of us who don’t know the handshake are not privy.
The Smoking Gun, which filed a Freedom of Information request for recordings and documents involved in this debacle, lays it all out for the public to see. The FAA made Inhofe take a remedial class and would “expunge” the letter in his file regarding the incident and action in two years provided Inhofe doesn’t’ kill someone first.
This “fine” 14-degree morning finds me at Kansas City International Airport. Funny, the airport doesn’t seem to have that international flair. You can get heat-lamp breakfast bagels with egg, sausage and bacon for free. That is because they were yesterday’s. And how about a bottle of water for $3.10? Ah, the joys of travel.
Snow is everywhere but hopefully not on our runways as we leave in hopefully 45 minutes for the subtropical climate of Southeast Texas. I think Wednesday night’s-early Thursday snowstorm left about 7 inches on the ground. More snow expected today, but hopefully I will be back home when that happens. The weather said the temperature is not expected to climb above freezing here in KC at least in the next week. That is just sad.
It started snowing again just as we started to take off. Here, taken by cell phone inside the cabin and through my dirty window, our plane gets sprayed with anti-freeze.
This has been a crappy trip. I think I broke my camera yesterday while taking photos of the old Union Station’s fantastic-looking ceilings. It looks as if it will take maybe a month to get it fixed and depending on how far the manufacturer thinks the camera fell from my hands will decide whether the warranty for my “shock-proof” camera will kick in. Otherwise, Kansas City has some pretty friendly people, I will give them that. I would have liked to explore the city, period. But snow and my meetings took that down the old John Crapper.
