SuperShuttle

With such a tight connection in Charlotte, we were convinced there was no way our luggage would meet us in Dallas. But to our amazement and to the credit of US Airways, our luggage was there, fully intact. Luggage wasn't going to be the problem this night. The infamous line from the movie Apollo 13, "Looks like we just had our glitch for this mission" was ringing in my ears.

Having never been to Dallas before, I had scouted the travel arrangements to our hotel, those wonderful soft beds awaiting us, and was advised that the Super Shuttle was the most convinient and economical method. The Super Shuttle turned out to be not so super.

After taking 20 minutes to find the umarked pickup location, we found two other travelers awaiting the shuttle with us, one of which had used it before and found it to be super. This night would change his mind.

Three shuttles stopped, asked us our destinations, told us another shuttle would pick us up and promptly left. The fourth shuttle finally picked us up. The poor guy who'd used it before was going to a different part of Dallas and was left to wait for a later shuttle. We thought that was the last we'd see of him, but for some reason the rest of us never did figure out, our driver Jamal looped around the airport terminal, taking us back to our pick up spot. Now you have to understand the timing; our flight arrived at 11:30pm. And it's pushing 12:45am with all of us having sessions to attend at 8am. We were more than ready to get to those comfy rooms that were awaiting us. Jamal soon finished circling the terminal and put us on our way to downtown Dallas. If and when the poor other guy got to his destination, we'll never know. But I doubt he'll be using the Supper Shuttle again.

At this point, the trip which started in such a routine fashion, which had been so rudely interrupted by the Charlotte dash and the not so super shuttle, should've returned to a routine trip again. That was going to turn out to be a bad assumption.