Charlotte: Day 1

After saying goodbye to my beautiful girlfriend, Catherine, I was off to the Charlotte International Airport. We arrived around 2 PM on Tuesday, July 8th. Shortly after check-in, the Wofford crew all said our goodbyes to out parents. Those on the Wofford crew are Collins, Adrianne, Patrick, Byron (Dr. McCane), Zach (who will fly over on his own on Friday), and myself. With plenty of time to spare before our departure, the Wofford team and I were able to grab a bite to eat, play Egyptian rat-screw, and relax.
Time to board for out 4:30 flight to Frankfurt. I sat down next to a German electrical engineer named Alex. He spoke perfect English while telling me his story and I told him mine. Everything went smoothly as we taxied out to the runway almost on time and sat, waiting in line for our turn to take-off. I looked out the window and saw an almost black sky of storms. No big deal; we just have to wait out this storm, right? Our captain soon told us that there was a problem with the steering control of the nose wheel, so we would have to wait until the storm passed and then would have to be towed back to the gate for the problem to be fixed. We waited in the plane as the problem was slowly fixed and the fuel was topped off. Back to the runway we went. As we waited for our take-off course to be changed due to more bad weather, another computer problem came up, and we went right back to the gate, only this time they let us off the jet. By the time we got off, we had been on the plane for four hours with only strolling around the runway twice. We could have been halfway to Frankfurt. My new friend Alex said that this would be his first and last business with US Airways.
While back in the airport, we soon got word from Byron that the entire flight was canceled. So now we stood in line to figure out our next move. While standing in line, myself and the crew counted how many people were having complete melt-downs and crying. After reaching about six, we stopped playing because we realized that some were crying for serious reasons, like one lady who needed to get to her brother’s funeral. After a lot of frustration, our new plan would be to fly from Charlotte to Boston, Boston to Frankfurt, and Frankfurt to Tel Aviv. Whether or not that would actually happen was another story. We finally got settled into a hotel by about 1:30 AM. It had already been twelve hours, and we didn’t even go anywhere. Travel hassles: 1 Wofford: 0

Collins' Corner: It sucked.