NorthWORST At It Again

If there's one airline I could choose to avoid at all costs, it's Northwest. NWA has to be the most unreliable, worst airline in the industry. I'm not sure it will change much with the Delta merger, but it certainly can't get much worse. The planes are old, out of date and have more quirks than a 45-year old dressing up to play Laire.

Naturally, my 9:15 p.m. flight Monday night was delayed more than 2.5 hours due to a mechanical issue. I'm all for getting to my destination safely, but a little organization and at minimum a half-assed effort from the NorthWORST staff would be appreciated. At 4 p.m. I noticed the same flight number out of Columbus was delayed. In my two-hour pre-flight e-mail notice, NWA said on time. Not so much. If you know the plane is having an issue, come up with a contingency plan to find an identical plane, at your airline's largest hub no less, and transfer passengers and baggage immediately. It was the last flight of the night and planes were sitting everywhere. It doesn't take a high IQ to figure that out. After waiting 2 hours they finally made the brilliant decision to switch us on to an idle plane across the airport.

What it meant for me was arriving in San Diego at 1:55 a.m. PST. The flight was good all things considered, if not a little hot. Everybody complained about how warm the plane was, but no flight attendant could managed to turn the thermostat knob to the left. Besides that, not too bad considering the delay. I guess it's to be expected. It's flying the friendly skies on the worst airline in business with planes that want the 70s back. I got home to Murrieta at 3:15 a.m. after driving through some seriously dense fog in the mountains ... 100 feet of visibility. I got up for work at 6 a.m. and the day that felt like two was just getting started.

I made a drive through the Santa Anas and Cleveland National Forest at 8 a.m. on the Ortega Highway, which can really test your nerves when you are buzzing on caffeine and little sleep. I successfully made it to my business meeting in Orange County right on time at 9:30. After a few hours discussing the industry and feeling pretty good for hardly any shut-eye, I zipped back to Murrieta using the 91, now free of morning traffic. By the time I got back to the office it was 2 p.m. and time to drive 40 miles north in our KTM Sprinter van to Milestone MX to break in several motocross media ATVs.

Before I knew it the clock was ticking past 5 p.m. and I was putting in some hard laps aboard our all-new 450 SX ATV. The exercise and motos were good and it gave me a needed boost of energy for the 40-mile drive home. I got hung-up in traffic on "the" 60 so the drive ended up taking me an 1 hour 15 minutes. I've learned freeways are always referred to as "the" 15 or "the" 405 here. I'm not sure why, they just are. Next up, Taco Bell and a 25-minute wait for two soft tacos! Not ideal on limited energy. I can officially say that particular location has lost any future business from me. By the time I ate and caught up with Tracy I was crashing hard. I probably beat my grandma to bed when I fell asleep at 8:30.

The biggest news, I finally moved in a new couch today over lunch. I'm pretty "stoked" to dump the college futon and sit on some real furniture. No cable or Internet yet. It's become a game of how long I can hold out!