Not Today

I'm going to Barnhenge, dammit... but it won't be today.

There's a massive brush fire that's been raging in the north part of the county for the last week or so. Overnight it flared up to over 5000 acres and all of the roads north of Rockledge, which is about 20 miles north of here, are closed. There's no way possible that I can catch a flight in Orlando if I can't get to Orlando.

So, while sitting in traffic detouring off the interstate and heading back south I call the airline to see what my options are. Well, if I can get to Orlando I can pay a small fee and sit on standby until a seat becomes available. Ummm... what part of roads closed do they not understand?

Or I can pay a $100 fee to reschedule. Now, if it were my fault that I wasn't getting on my flight I could understand the reschedule fee, but I have no control over acts of God, do I? But despite three phone calls from both Wil and myself, in two different languages, and to every "supervisor" at US Airways reservations, they are unwilling to even meet us halfway. I find this incredible. Poor, poor customer service. But I suppose it is a business. The guy on the phone tells me that there's no way that he can confirm the brushfire and the fact that the roads are closed. So I turned my radio all the way up, pressed the phone to the speaker and let him listen to the traffic report. Still no budging.

So I guess if I really want to go- and I do really want to go- I'm going to have to pay the fee. Either that, or they can refund my ticket, minus a $100 processing fee. Ummm... WTF?!

I'm trying to find a flight out tomorrow and hoping that they've got this beast of a fire under control by then. I think I'll try and get a later in the day sort of flight and that way Florida Highway Patrol has more time to figure out what they're going to do.

BTW, Laura is supercool, and funny as hell. When I called her to let her know not to drive all the way to PA to pick me up, instead of getting all bent out of shape over some botched plans, she simply said, "Ok, I'll put the horse and buggy away."

For now I'm going to just cross my fingers, and hope that we make it out of here tomorrow.