Wish me luck

I generally have pretty good luck when it comes to flying. I've only been stranded for a ridiculous amount of time a couple of times, and since I usually travel alone, I've had more than my share of good luck.

(And, yes, I've bored many of you with these stories before, so let me get them out there on the Internets and be forever done with them.)

Case #1: I was flying from Central New York to Philadelphia, and at the time there were no direct flights to Philly from my hometown on Sundays. So, when I got to the ticket counter and the agent noticed I was booked to Philadelphia via Pittsburgh -- just about tripling the usual travel time -- she took pity on me and rebooked me in first class.

Case #2: I was flying home to New York from Portland when I was in college, and my connection was at O'Hare. Upon check-in, passengers were told the Midwest was getting hammered by a blizzard and the flight probably would be delayed for many hours, if not canceled. This led most people to go home or try a different route. Having nowhere to go, I went to the gate.

About 15 minutes before the originally scheduled departure time, an agent came to the gate and said, "There's a break in the weather. We're leaving right now." So the seven of us who had had nothing better to do than wait at an aiport gate for an indeterminate amount of time got on a flight that not only departed early, but also provided us personal flight attendants. (For the record, we still weren't allowed to sit in first class.)

Case #3: I was headed to my high school reunion a couple of years ago, and thanks to some nasty weather somewhere in the country, planes were having difficulty getting to the Delta hub in Cincinnati. This, in turn, scuttled many departures out of Cincinnati. With my flight to Syracuse canceled and no room on flights to nearby airports, it looked more and more like I'd be spending the night at the airport.

I put my name on the standby list for the last flight of the night to Syracuse, but was told there were a dozen people ahead of me. When it came time for standbys to get their seats, we were told there was one seat left. But I, being the lone solo traveler on the standby list, got the seat. The lesson here: There are a lot of people out there who are nicer than me and wouldn't ditch their travel companions to make a flight.

Disclaimer: This isn't to say I haven't had bad flying experiences before. The one that springs to mind immediately is a trip to Pennsylvania last winter in which it took me eight hours to cover the approximately 65 minutes of flying time from Connecticut to Philadelphia, then Philly to central Pennsylvania.

The point: This is just a really roundabout way of saying that although I'm not seeing any potential weather problems for my flight to Portland this weekend -- which, if you'll recall, is solely for the purpose of attending an Oscar party -- I have visions in my head of watching the broadcast from a very depressing lounge at the Minneapolis airport.

That might, however, make for some interesting live-blogging material.