I think I’ve discovered a new inverse-square law: The probability of a hassle free trip is proportional to one over the square of the number of planes involved. Since my trip involved three separate aircraft, it was doomed from the start. I got out of Omaha in time, though it was on a plane that was supposed to leave two-and-a-half hours earlier, but Chicago was a different story. They had some bad weather, and my flight to Philadelphia was delayed by two-and-a-half hours. This of course caused me to miss my last-of-the-day connection to Ithaca, and I spent the night in the Philadelphia airport listening to International CNN endlessly looping through the New Hampshire results and British soccer scores. It’s now 6:00am, and I’ve got another four hours before I finally get out of here. I even paid for the ridiculously expensive wireless because I finished my book and the only way to survive airports is to spend money freely on junk food (I hit up Dunkin’ Donuts at 5:00) and entertainment.

Ah well, at least I should accumulate a disproportionally large number of travel stories over the next five years.