Hey there fellow road warriors!  I haven't posted an entry in a while, and since I'm not sure how many people are following the weather and traffic blog, I have no idea if that was noticed.  Anyhow, I did take a couple of days off from anchoring CLTV traffic - and flew to New Orleans for the holiday weekend.  I was secretly hoping I would have some knarly air travel experience to share with my readers, (or reader) but alas, everything was pretty smooth.  

However, after 3 full days in the city, when my husband and I decided that we'd had one-too-many hurricanes, and our flip-flops were sticking to the liquor-strewn and sun-heated streets of the French Quarter -- we (and our livers) all of the sudden wanted to get back to Chicago -- fast.  Our flight was at 3 p.m., and the only other flight was at 6:30 a.m.  So to go stand-by on the early bird would mean that if we didn't make it, we were looking at about 9 hours of oily airport coffee, musak, and the sight of garishly-attired tourists who thought that a bedazzled fleur-de-lis t-shirt seemed like a good idea at the time (dang those hurricanes!)

We were the first two passengers on the stand-by list... and felt good about our chances... but then eight United crew members gathered near the gate agent... four pilots and four flight attendants.  They'd double-booked the crew.  I looked at my husband and we didn't even need to speak.  With four of any available seats going to crew, could there really be two others????  Yet, as if a the voo-doo high priestess of Toulouse Street was watching over us... there were two more seats.  We were on the flight, and hubby even got the extra leg-room of Business Class.  Wahoo!   It was a gutsy travel move, yet it paid off.  Anyone out there ever made a travel gamble?