Travail of travel

"A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving"
~ Lao Tzu

Clearly I am a good traveler, or at least America West assumed that I am. Today was the second* worst unnecessarily long travel day that I've ever experienced. I can understand that, from Seattle, it takes 23 hours to fly to Taiwan or 6 hours to fly to Pennsylvania. They are far away. But 9 hours to fly to Las Vegas? That's a bit ridiculous.

I arrived at the airport at 12:30pm, giving myself plenty of time to check in and make it through security for a flight at 2:43pm. I had plenty of time, all right! Due to all kinds of issues (including sitting on the tarmac for 90 minutes while we were de-iced during a blizzard), we finally took off from Seatac at 8:48pm. The actual flight only took 2 hours, plus some additional time as we waited for the ground crew to get ready for us. By the time I got my bag at baggage claim, I'd been travelling for over 10 hours. For some reason, the complimentary drink on the flight didn't quite cut it for me.

*The worst was a 15-hour trip from San Francisco to Phoenix during Christmas