One More Week Not In The Canyons

Incredible day. I got a call from Delta at two in the afternoon today asking me to kindly call them back because my flight to South Africa had been canceled. In truth, only the leg from Atlanta to Johannesburg had been canceled due to a strike at South African Airlines, a Delta partner. Fantastic. The strike started on Friday, so those people who keep close tabs on the airline industry beat me to the punch in rebooking flights on other airlines. When I called to see what to do and explained that I needed to talk to someone about this whole mess the woman on the phone asked what exactly I would like to talk about. What would I like to talk about? Are you kidding? I'd like to talk about how moving my bed in my room will affect its Feng Shui.

To make a long story short I think I'll actually be leaving in about a week, and it only took some three hours on the phone to get to that conclusion. Potential routes to Johannesburg include stops in Sao Paulo, Dakar, Paris, Frankfurt, New York, and of course Atlanta. Routes are shown above. So, if you have anything you need to say or send to me, you still have a few days. Although I likely won't be available because I'll be busy rearranging my bedroom...or at least I'll be discussing it with the folks at Delta.

However frustrated I may be, and however ready to go I may be, this is a good test for the rest of the year. Delta actually tried quite hard to get me on earlier flights, but you can't give me a seat when there isn't one. This delay, like all dark clouds, has its silver lining: I discovered that STA travel hadn't sent me a couple of the paper tickets I'll need later in the year. When I called, they discovered that they hadn't booked those very same flights for me although I had paid for them. So, as they say, things have a way of working out.