Back in Lafayette

Following our week in Portland, we had to come back to Louisiana to tie up some loose ends and take care of some of our final business here. We still need to hire a mover to get our stuff to Portland and sell the house. That's really all we have left to do, but they are pretty big things.

So after a week of bars, restaurants, brunches, sushi, ghetto karaoke, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, The Office, and some beers, we were scheduled to fly out of Portland at 12:15 am on Monday (Sunday night, if you will.) Scott drove us to the airport and we said our goodbyes. We checked our luggage and found our gate. By the time we got to the gate they were already boarding passengers, so we basically walked right onto the plane. I was pretty impressed and figured we were due for a pleasant and smooth flight.

Boy was I wrong.

Once we were seated on the plane, belted in and ready to go, an announcement was made that an instrument required for flight was broken. Apparently this isn't a part that is required for the plane to fly, but regulations stipulate that they cannot fly if this instrument isn't working. The pilot announced that it was being looked at for repair, and if repair wasn't possible, then they would look into replacing it with a spare or take one from another plane.

After about 30 minutes the pilot came on again to announce that the part was not repairable and there were no spares to be had and none to be found on other planes. We were asked to get off of the plane and they were going to let us know what would happen from there.

What happened from there was Continental Airlines really letting me down. There was very little communication to let us know our status, and even less of an effort to help us make alternate accommodations.

Long story short, we waited in the airport from midnight until 7:30 am because the part had to be DRIVEN in from Seattle. Finally, cranky and exhausted we boarded the plane at 7:30 and flown to Houston. Naturally we missed our flight from Houston to New Orleans by a long shot. Due to Hurricane Katrina there aren't too many flights heading either in or out of New Orleans, so the next flight wasn't available until the following day. I told them to go to hell with that idea, and to fly me to Lafayette, which is what they did. We got confirmed tickets on a 5:30 pm flight from Houston to Lafayette, but made it onto the standby list for a flight at 3:30 pm. As luck would have it we caught the 3:30 flight and got to Lafayette a little after 4:00.

So after a long and unpleasant trip we arrived back in Lafayette and here we will stay for a few weeks while we finish those things up.