Ahhh. The glorious life of travel! The glitz! The glam! Oh, the places you see when you are someplace new every week! The joy of having wonderful food prepared to order in a new place every night. The luxury of being a slob and having your room restored to magazine quality while you are out for the day! It’s a fabulous life!

So fabulous, in fact, that they have to throw in some minor annoyances, just to keep us glitzy folks grounded. Pun totally intended.

Now, we know everyone loves an airport. The comfy seats. The abundance of power outlets to charge our endless devices. The endless selection of reasonably priced food and beverage. All at your very fingertips. What’s not to love??

That is why I am so glad I have had the opportunity to spend so much time in them over the past few weeks.

Like when my flight from NYC home was cancelled for no apparent reason. On 4th of July weekend. When there are plenty of empty seats on all the other planes.

Or when my flight back to NYC was cancelled due to weather. And the lack of pilots. No worries. It was only the last flight out that night. I’ll grab my bags and try again tomorrow. Except, apparently, when flights in Denver are cancelled, the bags from that flight are sent on a slow boat from China to baggage claim. What would be a 15-20 min trip  to the baggage carousel, were our plane to have landed at gate C35, evidently becomes an over 3 hour trip if our plane never leaves gate C35. More time to enjoy the reasonably priced food and drink.

And we can get massive tubes of steel off the ground and hurtle them through the air at 30,000 feet with all of our amazing technology. But the technology that coordinates all that on the ground is evidently not so trustworthy. A “computer glitch” or power outage can cause worldwide travel chaos. That is extremely comforting when one is about to board that massive tube of steel to hurtle through the air.

Luckily for my parents, they were traveling with me today, so they got to experience my wonderful travel luck and the joys of airport living. For several hours. At multiple airports. Lots of time to lounge in the comfy seats.

They were extremely lucky though. Their flight was only delayed. Mine was actually cancelled. I actually had to rebook my flight on another airline, whose computer system evidently meets 21st century requirements, and finally made it to my hotel room before bedtime.

They only had to deal with a delay. At least 4 times per leg. For a total of 6 hours and counting. And are still sitting in Atlanta waiting for their delayed (again) connection flight to take off. They will still be home sometime early tomorrow morning. Just think of how well charged their electronic devices will be??

What would those of us who spend our lives at 30,000 feet do, if it weren’t for these minor annoyances to keep our heads out of the clouds and our feet firmly on the ground? Our glitz and glam would be blinding to the rest of the world.

So, thank you, airline industry, for keeping it real.