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1. Posted by Rebecca Kuehn - 1 year, 1 month, 1 week, 2 days, 16 hours, 53 minutes ago

   When I was an associate in private practice, I had to take a multi-day deposition of a plaintiff outside of Dayton, Ohio.  My travel arrangements had me staying at a hotel next to a newspaper processing plant, which started printing at 2:00 a.m.  Years later, I was staying at a hotel during a trial in Virginia Beach—which hotel ended up being next to the railroad tracks.  You guess it—a long train came through at 3:00 a.m.  Very “My Cousin Vinny.”  Location IS everything.

2. Posted by Charles Muffly - 1 year, 1 month, 1 week, 2 days, 16 hours, 34 minutes ago

   A few years ago, I flew to Chicago for short mid-day meeting.  Flew out of Omaha early at 8AM, and return flight was at 9PM-ish out of O’Hare.  Unfortunately, the return flight coincided with a storm system with several tornadoes.  We were literally 1 minute from landing in Omaha when wind sheer forced to land at a small airport in Iowa.  Because it was supposed to be a day trip, I didn’t bring any clothes.  American was nice to put us up in a hotel, but it was next to train tracks.  The kicker is that a colleague took a flight out of Midway that beat the storm by 10 minutes.

3. Posted by Lance Johnson - 1 year, 1 month, 1 week, 2 days, 16 hours, 16 minutes ago

   I was returning to New York from Portland, Oregon through O’Hare. Left Portland 1 hour late - not too bad. I then sat in O’Hare for 5 hours after delays and cancellations. Finally, left to LaGuradia (not my original choice) at 9 PM. As we wer nearing Laguradia, the pilot inidates that it is fogged in and we are heading to Newark (probably my third choice). But wait! Newark is fogged in and we are running out of fuel, so we head to - Baltimore! I don’t know if you have flown to Baltimore on United, but they really do not hot have a big support staff. As we are waiing on the tarmac for someone to show up, I called Hertz and got the last car in the lot at 2AM. I then drove to Westchester and arrived for Eater weekend a full 24 hours after leaving Portland.

4. Posted by Tracy - 1 year, 1 month, 1 week, 2 days, 16 hours, 9 minutes ago

   On a trip to NC, I landed in Fayettsville after 7:00..which is apparently when the airport closes.  They let us out on the tarmack and we had to choose between two darkened buildings to walk to.  Would it be the hangar or the terminal?  We all hung around until a guy in fatigues got out.  We figured he’d done this trip and would know which building to go into.  Well at 7:30, the only employees in the airport were the janitorial staff.  No rental agencies, no cabs, no nothing.

5. Posted by Hoodwinked! - 1 year, 1 month, 1 week, 2 days, 15 hours, 37 minutes ago

   When I worked for a corporate law department, we went out on “beauty pageant” trips where we interviewed law firms to handle our work. We were in Raleigh-Durham, NC, in an area that was recommended by one of the firms to be interviewed.  Here’s the scene:  Very nice tree-lined area with little shops.  We pull up to a Travelodge that appeared VERY out of the place.  The doors to the hotel rooms looked like green prison doors and some of the walls of the lower level rooms were made out of cinderblock.  In one colleague’s room, there were bulletholes riddled in one wall.  At any moment, we all expected to see a chalk outline of a previous guest!  There were employees from the “oldest profession in the world” soliciting customers. Being new, I and another new colleague stayed at the awful place and we decided not to make a scene with our boss and the older attorneys by insisting we go someplace else for the night (we were all riding together in a mini-van).  As we slept in our clothes that night, we said “never again!”

6. Posted by China Law Blog - 1 year, 1 month, 1 week, 2 days, 14 hours, 55 minutes ago

   Trip to Russian Far East a few years ago.  There mainly to visit a potential client in P-K.  Stopped off in Vladivostok to visit a lawyer friend and got arrested for not having a Vladivostok visa.  Left town and got diverted to Magadan due to bad weather.  It was January and Magadan had NO heat.  Paid $9 a night for a “Luxe” hotel room without heat.  Finally got a 9 hour flight to Moscow on Domededavo Airlines (“ded” is our middle name”) .  Landed, stayed one night at a top of the line hotel, flew to NYC and then back to Seattle.  I had travelled around the world, been arrested, nearly frozen to death, and I never got to P-K and never met with the potential client and never got their business either.  Top that one people!
   www.chinalawblog.com

7. Posted by stevie b - 1 year, 1 month, 1 week, 2 days, 14 hours, 52 minutes ago

   On arrival in 3rd world country, to work on a post-JD additional doctorate:

   Check 2 large bags (clothes, printer, books, etc).  Carry 2 computers in backpack padded with one set of underwear.

   Arrive late Saturday - clear customs at 1:30 AM.  WITHOUT any of the checked bags—ever!  As all stores in country closed SUnday, with class start Monday, many days before have a change of clothes - and then charged $100’s in duty on replacements.

   Worse - arrive at appartment.  Cant get in - on list for wrong night so nobody to let me in.  Walk to campus, find drinking party & not much else, eventually find RA but not on her list. 

   Partly rescued by assistant registrar jogging on beach at 7 AM.

8. Posted by Caterina - 1 year, 1 month, 1 week, 2 days, 13 hours, 43 minutes ago

   Two experiences: Flew from California to Milan on a direct flight and followed regulations concerning carry-on luggage (i.e., checked suitcase).  Arrived in Milan the morning of a client meeting and was told that somehow my luggage was left behind at JFK.  I’d traveled in blue (actually black) jeans and casual shoes - had to find a way to purchase enough clothing to look presentable in a country where I didn’t speak the language, after getting off a red-eye.

   The other couple are funny (in retrospect).  Every single time my boss and I traveled on one particular project, something went wrong.  One time, returning to Boston from DC, I smelled smoke (on the airplane) - turns out the oil line to one engine had broken and oil was being spewed onto the engine - pilot turned off engine and we diverted to LaGuardia.  They herded us onto another US Air plane, but the pilot was stuck filling out paperwork on the first flight and was the last one to board the new plane - only to discover that there was a maintenance hold on the plan, so we couldn’t use it.  Got to wait for another US Air plane to land so we could use it to get to Boston…  One other trip, our flight to Philadelphia (to get to DE)landed in NYC instead, so we had the joy of staying there and taking the train down in the morning (not too bad) - one other trip, we were driving from the Philadelphia airport to Wilmington late at night (on an interstate) - a truck (running without headlights) made a U-turn across the road right ahead of us.  We came close to hitting it, since we were traveling at 55 mph.  There wasn’t one trip on that project where everything went right…

9. Posted by Kristina - 1 year, 1 month, 1 week, 2 days, 13 hours, 26 minutes ago

   Flew overnight from NYC to Brazil for weeklong closing meetings. One suitcase had my clothes, the other had the closing documents. Its an overnight flight, so I retrieve my luggage and head to to the hotel for a quick shower and change of clothes before the meeting. When I get to my room, I discover I have 2 suitcases of clothes and no documents - I had picked up a look-alike bag by mistake. The concierge was amazing, for $50 he drove the stolen bag back to the airport himself, found mine, and brought it back just in time for meetings. I was in a panic for an hour. Thankfully my boss (who was with me) never found out my mistake.

10. Posted by K. - 1 year, 1 month, 1 week, 21 hours, 6 minutes ago

    We flew from the west coast to NY, NY to Paris, but on every leg of the flight something went wrong.  Plane sat on the tarmac in NY for six hours.  First fixing a mechanical problem, then a funny smell caused several passengers to freak out, a half dozen demanded to bet let off, which meant all luggage had to be offloaded and the remaining passengers luggage reloaded.  Eventually cops came on board to arrest one woman who threatened a flight attendant. 
    It wasn’t work related, it was my honeymoon.  But it was bad enough to make me wish I was back at work.  Now I never go anywhere without something work-related to read, just in case I’m held hostage for 6+ hours again, at least I can do something productive rather than just look at crap in the SkyMall catalog.