We’re having a heat wave

This is my last night in southern Illinois.  I’m down here on a Growsafe installation and its been hot.  Not as hot as some places but hotter than I’m used to.  Not that I’m complaining.  I’ve been cold for 2 solid years and it feels good to be warm again.  Some of the local news is talking about temps in the low 100’s.  We’ve been in the high 90’s with high humidity as well.  I won’t mind going home.

My trip down was a gong show.  They held our plane on the ramp in Saskatoon while the pilot and a mechanic covered their respective asses.  Evidently the pilot noticed a tire that he didn’t like the looks of during his walkaround.  I’m just guessing but I suspect there wasn’t a suitable replacement in Saskatoon.  That meant that the pilot and mechanic had to sign off enough paper to cover their asses so that Delta could fly the plane to Minneapolis and change the tire there.  All that ass covering took well over an hour and I only had about an hour and a half for my connection in Minneapolis.  Sure enough, as we rolled to a stop at the terminal a pickup with a new tire and a hydraulic jack lying in the box pulled in under the wing and two old geeks got out and started getting ready to change our tire.  Meanwhile we scrambled to get harassed in immigration and on our way to our respective destinations. 

I made my connection but they more or less closed the door behind me.  There wasn’t a hope in hell that my bag would make it and sure enough, when I got to St. Louis no bag arrived.  That meant some more time wasted in the lost baggage office where a very stupid woman ahead of me was going into great detail about her kids hockey bags.  When I finally got my claim filed I was able to learn that there were no more flights from Minneapolis that night which meant that my bag would (likely) arrive on the first flight in the morning.  I guess I’ve always thought that lost bags would be handled separately but no, evidently they just get dumped in the hold with every other bag.  And then they get similarly dumped out on the conveyor with all the other bags.  I’m not sure how they end up in the lost bags office because there wasn’t anybody from Delta there in the morning to pick my bag off the conveyor.  After I retrieved it I tried to contact Delta to tell them that I had my bag but that turned into a voicemail ordeal and eventually I gave up.  Obviously they didn’t care too much about it because despite having my phone number and despite not ever finding my bag they have never called to tell me where my bag is (or isn’t.)