I went to San Diego this past week for a quick 2-day set of meetings. I stayed at the Holiday Inn on the Bay, which meant that my 11th-floor room overlooked San Diego Harbor, right in front of where the Star of India, the third-oldest ship still in one piece, is moored, and where I also had a view of two aircraft carriers and a Carnival cruise ship coming into port one morning while I ate my $15 room service bacon and eggs.

That was all fun, but the craziness that was my trip home was better.

I realized Thursday morning that my meetings were going to be over by 1:00 that afternoon, but I wasn't scheduled to leave untill the 10:50pm redeye, that would arrive at Dulles at 6:00 the next morning. My plan had been to take a cab directly from the airport to the office, and work, bleary-headed, for the rest of the day.

But then the idea struck me that I should try to find an earlier flight out. I called my secretary, who contacted the firm's travel agency, and they quickly found me a flight that left at 2:30 that would route me through Denver and get to Dulles at midnight. Perfect.

The only problem was that my co-worker, who was staying over till the next day, and who didn't have any meetings that day and therefore was back at the hotel, had my suitcase in his rental car. When I called him at 12:50 following up on my prior email, anxious to be heading to the airport in short order, he said he had just received my email but was at Denny's for lunch, where he had just placed his order and therefore couldn't leave immediately. I got one of the other people at my meeting to take me to Denny's, where we grabbed the suitcase, and then scurried over to the airport. It was now about 1:10.

I went to the kiosk at the United desk to check in. It told me, "Your flight to Denver has been delayed, which will cause you to miss your connection." Oh no, I thought. I went to talk to a person, and he told me that not only was I not able to get on this flight to Denver in time, but my nonstop San Diego-to-Dulles redeye slot had already been snapped up by someone else, so the best he could do for me was to send me to San Francisco at 3:00, where would catch a redeye at 11. I asked if they could route me through Salt Lake City overnight, so I could at least see my parents if I had to be stranded at a random airport in the West for several hours, but United doesn't fly directly from San Diego to Salt Lake.

I noticed the man I was talking to was Brazilian -- he had a Brazilian flag lapel pin and his nametag read "Joe [surely José] Carvalho." I was about to appeal to his better nature and kindness by asking him, in Portuguese, what part of Brazil he was from. I thought maybe if he thought we had a connection, he might try harder to find something for me. But there was no need.

Suddenly, José's eyes lit up. "Wait a second," he said. "There's a flight to L.A. in thirty minutes that just had a seat open up. You can catch a flight from L.A. that gets to Washington at midnight." His fingers flew furiously over his keyboard and I could tell that I was witnessing a man totally in his element. He lived for moments like this, and fortunately, he was good at what he does. Frantically, he printed off a couple of new boarding passes for me and actually jumped out from behind the counter to show me where I could catch the bus to take me to the commuter terminal for my flight to L.A. that left just moments from now. I thanked him (I should have done so in Portuguese) and ran off, breathless.

Upon arriving at the new terminal, of course, I had to wait in security. The line wasn't terribly long, but it wasn't all that short either, and I was still afraid I'd miss my flight, as boarding was about to begin. When I handed my ticket to the TSA guy making sure I was where I was supposed to be, I offhandedly pointed out that my flight was scheduled to leave in 20 minutes, hoping he'd use his authority to allow me to cut ahead in line. No beans. Instead, he scolded me: "Shame on you for being late!" I figured it wasn't worth it to point out that I was unaware this flight even existed until 5 minutes earlier. Where José obviously existed to serve his customers, this guy was just there to take up space (as was the guy in front of me in line who refused to let me cut ahead when they announced boarding for my flight when we were still several people away from the metal detectors: "Will it really make a difference if you're ahead of me?")

Fortunately, I made it through security just in time to walk through the gate out onto the tarmac, where I loaded up on one of those teeny little two-prop commuter planes. I had seat 11D, and I noticed as I walked toward the back of the plane that the rows had seat A on the right and seats B and C on the left. Three seats per row. No D. I looked up. Ah - except for the very last row, which put seat B at the end of the aisle and had seat D crammed up in the windowless corner. That was my spot. The uncomfortableness of having a seat that was neither an aisle seat nor a window seat nor a middle seat was bearable, however, as the flight from San Diego to Los Angeles lasted exactly 29 minutes.

I found my gate at LAX, and then called Shelly to tell her of my new plans for the first time (it was the first moment I could breathe since I had left my meeting in San Diego). She didn't seem as surprised as I thought she would be to hear that I was in L.A., but at least she was glad I was coming home early.

The story gets more boring from this point (and trust me - it was a lot more exciting up to this point when I was living it than it seems now when I'm writing it), except for the guy who was lurking outside the men's room at Dulles to ask if I needed a taxi. I told him I did, and so he took me home in his faboo Lincoln towncar, decked out with lemonade and tonic water in the backseat, but no credit card machine - we had to stop at an ATM on the way.

While in San Diego, I enjoyed sleeping for two nights in a hotel room where no one screamed at me in the middle of the night, but when I arrived home just in time to give Annie her first bottle, it was good to be home.