The National Quartet Convention Yvonne has always wanted to attend the National Quartet Convention in Tennessee. When she mentioned it this year, I decided there was no better time to do it than right now. It was during September this year in Pigeon Forge. It lasts exactly a week. We got our tickets and airline bookings to fly out of Spokane at 6am on the morning of September 21. Then we had one hour to change planes at Dallas, Texas, to put us into Knoxville, Tennessee around midday. Well, we were all aboard and ready well before 6am, but the pilot announced he had some paperwork to take care of before we could leave, and after a half hour he again came on the public address to say he was still working on the paperwork and it would be just a few minutes more. So, we didn’t get off until after 7am and there went our next connection in Dallas. We landed in Dallas just as our connecting flight was taking off. The gate personnel had already realized our problem and tried to rebook us on the next flight out, but it was already full so they booked us on a flight for that afternoon. We sat around for several hours and every 45 minutes or so I would get a message on my phone that the flight had been delayed half an hour to an hour. This continued into the evening with updates at 7:07, 7:27, 8:32, 9:32, 9:47,10:27, 10:42, 11:27. We were getting very frustrated by this time and lost all faith in the airline that they knew their business. We finally arrived in Tennessee about 3am Monday morning, but now all the rental car offices were closed, but one had opened for someone else and they agreed to rent us a car at a horrendous price. It was quite foggy out and I didn’t have any idea how to get to Pigeon Forge from Knoxville and started out going the wrong way, but finally got turned around and found myself on google maps and arrived at the motel just as the sun was rising. We ate breakfast at the cafe across the street and went to bed. It was a great week of singing and visiting with all the different groups that show up to these things. Our motel was just half a mile from the convention center and most of the week the weather was okay for walking. Pigeon Forge is a tourist spot full of arcades, giftshops, entertainment venues of all kinds and even had a small village that reminded me of Disneyland. So, now it’s a week later and we were scheduled to fly out Sunday at 7am. We figured that surely the bad luck we had flying in wouldn’t hound us flying home. But, when we got to the airport there was one flight on the board that was delayed two hours. It was ours. They said the pilots were on mandatory rest, which means they hadn’t gotten enough sleep last night to be ready to fly. This meant we wouldn’t make our connection again. They rebooked us on a flight for that afternoon. Well, we would still get home by dark. The plane we were scheduled to take landed a couple hours late, and we watched the passengers deplane while we lined up to get aboard. But, wait. The attendant was making an announcement. He said there was a maintenance issue and it would just be a few minutes to find a mechanic to check out one of the wheels. A half an hour later, he said they couldn’t find the equipment they needed at this airport and the flight was being cancelled. This caused a big commotion as everyone had to find a different flight to get to their destination. There were no more flights that would get us to Spokane Sunday night and they finally booked us on a flight through Chicago for Monday afternoon and agreed to pay for a motel room and $12 a piece for a meal until then. The flight on Monday turned out to be on schedule and we made it to Chicago. Chicago is a busy place with airplanes landing and taking off every few minutes. We couldn’t get to our assigned gate right away because other planes were in the way. We were getting quite anxious about making our connection here. When we finally got off the plane we had just ten minutes to begin boarding our next flight. It was after dark when we got into Spokane, but it was sure good to see our car. We never plan to fly American Airlines again.