I was going to write about my grandparent's farm. It's a beautiful, beautiful place that I love very dearly. I wanted to share it with all of you as I do, in word and picture. But I want to spend time on that, since it is so important to me. And time is not something I exactly have, because of this:

Yup. Those are boarding passes. And no, I didn't collect them. They are all from Sunday, in my attempt to get to San Jose with my boss for a conference. I say "attempt" because it took this many boarding passes (only two used) and a car to get to our destination.

Delayed, missed flight, delayed, cancelled, five-hour drive. I wasn't reunited with my bag until this afternoon, much to my chagrin. There was much rejoicing in the kingdom when we were reunited.

So needless to say, my recent travel was (is) exhausting. I've been up since 6:45 am eastern time Sunday. I am looking forward to nestling myself in my bed and sleeping as soon as this post is done! So I thought I would just give you a few brief takeaways from my experience these past 40 hours (give or take):

ALWAYS pack an extra outfit in your carry-on. My mom had me do this for years, and today it finally came in handy. We jumped around on so many planes, our bags ended up stuck at the airport without us. Fortunately, I had an outfit in my carry-on I could change into today. I just felt so much cleaner and ready to face the day sans sleep with fresh clothes.
NEVER bring just one book on the plane. Just don't. I don't care if your book is 800 pages and you just started it. You never know how long you're actually going to spend in airports. I know better, and yet I only brought one book on the plane that I finished in two hours. Always have back-up reading material, and delays and layovers become more manageable.
NEVER yell at the customer service agents. It's not their fault, and they're trying to help you. It's not like they said, "oh, whoever yells the loudest, we'll give her a first-class seat on the next flight out of here, even if we have to kick someone off!" No one says that. No one (who would?). Just be patient, and all will be resolved.
Finally, ALWAYS stay positive. After a previous bad flight experience this summer, I started this trip accepting the fact all might not go as planned. It makes things a lot easier to be ready to respond to sudden changes positively instead of getting frustrated. My boss and I managed to make it to our destination simply by being ready to jump around and not letting things we can't change get to us.

So those are the four major things I've taken from this rough-rider worthy experience. What flight woes have you endured, and what did you learn from them?