A travel companion named Murphy

I am almost at the tail end at my 2-week trip to the UK and US and have had pretty good luck with most of my travel until yesterday. It was Murphy's Day as far as travel was concerned. We had a meeting in New York on June 9th and had to leave for Boston in the afternoon. Our flight to Boston was booked out of Newark (Mistake #1). Our flight was scheduled to depart at 4:50pm. We were done with our meeting by 2pm and decided to grab a bite to eat before heading out to the airport (Mistake #2).

We had a heck of a time trying to get a cab. It seemed like all available cabs in New York city had disappeared at that time. Those that we did manage to stop were not interested in going to the Newark airport (which is why this was Mistake #1). We walked around for 45 minutes searching for a cab and finally picked one up at Penn Station (Mistake #3 - should have taken a train to Boston!).

The cab ride was painful because by now rush traffic had started and we were stuck getting through the Lincoln Tunnel. We finally made it to the airport by 4:20pm. We might have arrived half an hour earlier if it wasn't for Mistake #2. Our scheduled flight had not departed yet but we did not think that we could make it (Mistake #4). We got ourselves booked on a later flight scheduled to depart at 6pm. We thought we could still make it to Boston at a decent hour and treat ourselves to a seafood dinner. But Murphy was hard at work. The 6pm flight was delayed and delayed again and delayed yet again to 10:30pm. The 4:50pm flight meanwhile took off at 7pm (remember Mistake #4?).

Our delayed flight did not take off until midnight. Needless to say, there was no seafood dinner that night. Murphy triumphed yet again!