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I have always loved to travel.  Being able to put out a couple hundred dollars and travel across the country is awesome to me, and I’ve done it more than many people my age.  I have been flying since I was a little child from my yearly voyage to California, to trips to Europe, the Caribbean and Hawaii, to more continental trips to Missouri, Texas, Washington DC, Florida, Massachusetts, Georgia, Arizona, Tennessee…

I’ve been to pretty much every state, take the Dakotas, Montana, Alaska and Maine.

Today was the first time I’ve really been a prissy little bitch while traveling.

The plan was that I would take the MoExpress shuttle to St. Louis, fly to Baltimore/Washington International, have dinner with my best friend of all time Landon during my four hour layover and then finish my flight to Raleigh North Carolina where I would meet my grandmother and then head to our hotel to prepare for our presentation tomorrow night.

Well, I did take MoExpress.  I sat next to a guy stuffing his face full of McDonalds and taking up a good portion of my seat doing it.  Behind me there was a guy eating a ten piece fried chicken bucket with biscuits and gravy.  Oh, don’t forget the woman who some how managed to get actual movie theater popcorn at 10:30 in the morning.  Not a small bag, we are talking the refillable plastic bucket.  Finally there was the kid who had two trays of Chinese food, which he ate solo.

Missouri is  sloppy state.

We arrive at the airport as scheduled at 12:30pm, I went through security without any trouble and declared sanctuary.

Too soon.

My flight is delayed 30 minutes.  I decided to take this extra time and explore the airport terminal.  To my surprise, the E terminal now connected to the D terminal, and so on all the way to A.  This is a new thing.  Southwest’s terminal has always sat as it’s own with no connection to the other terminals beyond using a shuttle.

I walk, and walk, and walk.  There are half mile markers through the terminal.  I guess the city of Saint Louis is trying to remove the negative health stigma attached to the state?

I walk all the way to terminal A, find nothing too exciting and head back to terminal E.

At The Great American Bagel and Bakery I order a veggie sandwich on an asiago bagel.

“That’ll be an extra $0.99 you know”

“Yes I understand that”

“What do you want again?  Turkey?”

“Veggie on asiago”

“Oh, yeah.  The asiago is an extra $0.99”

“Yes, that’s what I hear”

“What would you like on it?”

“Well, what veggies do you have?” (they don’t show the makings of the sandwich which makes me a bit nervous)

Pointing to her right, “Look at “Condiments”

I look to her left, where I see “Condiments”.  Is lettuce a condiment?  Ok, I bite, “Lettuce, tomato, red onion, cucumber, peppers and light mayo”.

“Want cheese?”

“Yes, provolone”

“Alright, do you want any cheese?”

“Yes… provolone”

“Oh, yeah.”

It’s over $9.00 for this sandwich.  I hand her my debit card as a man walks up and says, “I need a large coffee”.

The register attendant cancels the transaction to process his coffee order.  Mind you, there is a line about ten deep behind me and this bloke walks up and cuts in front of us all, and she cancels my transaction for a $2.50 cup of coffee.

Then she picks up the phone, apparently “Char-ease” has called in sick, again.

“Oh no!  You tell Char-ease she can’t be calling in again.  She called in yesterday, no way, nuh uh.”

This continues, my transaction is processed.  I leave, unwrap my bagel and am met with one piece of lettuce, two anemic tomato slices and vinegar.  So that’s how the sandwich got so greasy, the oil and vinegar she poured all over it.  Did I order that?  No.

So I took apart the sandwich and treated it as a half side salad with stale asiago bread on the side.

Needless to say it wasn’t very good and it definitely wasn’t worth $9.00+.  I would have been better off getting the caesar salad from Wolfgang Puck for $8.99 in the other terminal.  Lesson learned.

I get to the gate, flight delayed another ten minutes.

Flight delayed another 30 minutes.

Flight has arrived… ?  Huh?  It was at least forty minutes away and now, magically, it is here. We board the flight.

We sit on the the runway 20 minutes.  We start to take off, we stop.  We sit on the runway 30 minutes.  We return to the gate where we deplane and I plug in my laptop to charge a bit more.

The air traffic controllers in Baltimore are saying there is at least another hour before we can take off so I get myself comfortable, cancel my plans with Landon and hop onto the internet.
Ten minutes later they are calling us back onto the plane.  So much for an hour, but I won’t complain.

We get back on the plane.  We sit on the runway.  We sit some more.  We finally take off.

During the entire thing, everyone kept a positive attitude, thank the lord.  I mean, I was pessimistic and bitchy and pissy but I made sure to keep that to myself.  The flight attendants were so nice, the pilot kept us up to date as best he could and gate workers did their best to keep us comfortable with the entire situation.

That is why I love Southwest Airlines.  They put customer service as a top priority and had this been another airline, I am certain there would have been some pretty vocal people on the plane.

I only wish they had Midwest Airline’s cookies.  Never ending supply of warm cookies would keep any Missourian happy, especially the ones I met today.  Holy shit.
UPDATE:

We have