Planes, Buses, and Automobiles.

Wow. What a long day to travel. After going to bed at 1:30am I woke up at 5:15am to get to the airport on time so I could catch my flight. I decided to park in an outside lot that I had never been to before so obviously I ended up going the wrong way and had to backtrack a bit. Feeling like I dodged a bullet I get the airport only to discover that Austin-Bergstrom Airport is really busy at 6am! I get there and decide to not pay the $15 to check my bag. I'm glad I didn't because the line to get through security was a huge one. Not much longer than the line to check in baggage. After slowly getting through security I get in the plane and find my seat. Lucky for me my seatmate was a pretty cool person. For once it was someone I could talk to and not some drunken old hag. When the plane gets close to Atlanta we run into a bit of storm activity. The plane was not allowed to land. In fact the airport was backed up and many planes were left circling around the airport waiting for the go ahead to land. A few moments later the captain comes on the intercom. Our plane is running low on fuel so we will be redirected to Montgomery, Alabama. We land and once again the captain comes on the intercom and welcomes us to the Columbus, GA airport and that we should sit tight and wait to refuel before we take off again. A few more moments pass and again the captain comes on the intercom and tells us that there is something wrong with the plane and that someone from Atlanta was driving there with the part to fix it and it wouldn't take that long. We were then allowed to exit the plane and see what the Columbus, GA airport had to offer. Which basically was one little diner that definitely made more money today than they probably had made in the entire month of July. Again the captain came on the intercom to inform us that we needed to get all of our luggage at the baggage claim because they chartered a bus for us and it was on it's way. I thought since I had gotten along so well with my seatmate I figured that we should at least suffer together. We got on the bus that would eventually get us to Atlanta. But first we had to suffer through a bus that had zero air conditioning, at noon, in July, in Georgia. It was beginning to feel like a John Hughes movie. After getting about half way the bus ran into some construction along the interstate that made it seem more like a parking lot. Some tech savvy people were pulling out their GPS devices to give everyone a clue as to how far we were from the airport. After about an hour and a half of riding without the A/C we all finally arrive to a very much delayed Atlanta airport. Every flight seemed to be off by about 2 hours. After going through a security checkpoint for a third time I wait patiently in line for new flight details. After no luck getting on a flight on standby I remember that the day was going much better when I wasn't suffering alone so after I secured a seat on the next flight out I looked for my old seatmate to wait for the next flight. After wishing my new friend good luck in getting on her next flight I head back to where my flight was supposed to be. Only to get there and realize it had changed terminals. So I had to get to another terminal and the gate was one that was all the way down the other end. I finally reach the plane only to realize that this flight was scheduled exactly 12 hours (11 when you account for the time zone) after my first flight. I finally arrived in NC at around 8:30pm.