So, my buddy Keith tells me all the time that I should write a book with all of the stories that, according to him, are tales of "things that only happen to Dub". The following is one of those stories.

I've been in LAX since last night in preparation for a work meeting today. The meeting was quick and productive, however, it left me with 6 hours to kill before my flight back to SGU.

Seeing the opportunity to complete my required yearly Brasilia jumpseat observation time, I decided to pick a quick roundtrip that would get me there and back with enough time to eat when I got back to LAX. I chose Oxnard, California because it was a really quick trip and because I had never been there before. The gate agents in LAX were excellent and let me go down early to meet with the crew & get my things situated prior to boarding.

When I went down to the ramp, I found a weasily, "shirt & tie" type of man milling around and, without looking at his ID's, knew he was a Fed. I wasn't wrong...and he immediately notified me that I was being bumped from the observer seat. Lovely.

The gate agents caught this and came to the plane to suggest that I do a quick roundtrip to Palm Springs roundtrip. Her exact words were "it comes right back, too!". Lo and behold...it didn't. Well, to be fair...it did come back...2 hours later. Of course, I didn't know this until the First Officer pointed that out as we set the brakes at the gate in PSP.

So, here I was, spending the next 2 hours on my phone while sitting around in the Palm Springs airport.

I boarded the return flight to LAX with at least a small amount of hope that we would make it in early and the SGU flight would be late. Lo and behold, it wasn't. Again, to be fair, the same gate agent set me up on the next flight to Salt Lake City (which was leaving in less than 5 minutes at that point) and called the agent at that gate to make sure to get me on.

So here I sit...in seat 6C on a SkyWest CRJ-700 to SLC...where I will sleep in the crew lounge...and hope to get to work at a somewhat decent hour tomorrow.

Only me...only me.

Down the road....
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