Editor’s Note: This entry is Part 2 of a series detailing my recent trip to Phoenix on Halloween weekend, as well as the unexpected travel woes and poignant life experiences that followed.

LOS ANGELES, Calif. — I finally made it home, but not in the sense you’d expect.

Last I checked in with you, I was leaving “The Moxy” boutique hotel in Tempe, Ariz., and bound for Sky Harbor Airport.

Woes with American Airlines involving labor shortages and union strikes ejected me out of PHX the afternoon prior. They gave me a reservation slip for a local airport, paid the cabs, and told me to get my ass back here the next day. The soonest they could get me home, I was informed, was 36 hours later — involving a 7-hour layover in LAX and a red-eye back to IND about 3 hours before I was set to teach class that day.

What other choice did I have? I signed up for another Roman Holiday and prepared to come, see, and conquer. Continue reading →

TEMPE, Ariz. — It’s starting to become difficult to recall which day it is, let alone the correct time.

According to my sources, it’s 9:40 a.m. Pacific, and I’m stuck in Room 159 of the “Moxy” hotel in Tempe, near the Arizona State University campus.

My plan to visit two best-friends-who-count-as-family over the weekend went well, but finished with the mother of all belly-flops when my homebound flight from Sky Harbor (PHX) to Indianapolis (IND) was suddenly cancelled by The Powers that Be over at American Airlines.

Apparently, I’ve walked nose-first into an ongoing situation involving the airlines, thousands of underpaid flight attendants, various labor unions, and a smattering of vocal anti-vaccine, striking-employee protestors outside Sky Harbor itself. Continue reading →