Are we in Charlotte yet?

This week I went to a conference about plastics. I listened to people talk about the latest and greatest in plastics. Before I talk about that though, let me tell you about getting to this plastics conference.

The goal was to get to Charlotte NC. My coworkers, Peter and Eric, and I were to leave Portland OR at 6:10am, have a 2 hour layover in Chicago, and arrive in Charlotte by 3:30pm. We arrived in Charlotte at 8:30pm. "What happened?" you ask? Well...

We got on the 6:10am flight ok. This involved us getting to the airport by 5:00, so I woke up at 4:00am PDT. We got to Chicago O'Hare, and the fancy tv screen said that our flight to Charlotte was canceled. Great. It was the only flight on the 8 screens announcing departure times that was canceled. So we went over to United customer service, and the nice lady there said to use the automated flight adjustment feature on their electronic kiosk. Peter and I were put on the 8:58pm (Chicago time) flight. Eric somehow got onto the 3:45pm flight. Fine.

Peter and I, after several phone calls to Nike Travel, and several visits to the *friendly* (sarcasm here...) customer service agents at United, were able to get on a 5:25pm US Airways flight to Charlotte.

I learned a few things about Chicago O'Hare during this trip:
Freshly baked Cinnabons are in Terminal 2
The airport is big
The airport is really big
Customer Service at United in this airport is not very friendly or accomodating
Don't have a layover in Chicago