Dora, Dora, Dora the Explorer

As several of you probably already know, one of my many nicknames is Dora. I'm not going to go into the reasons for this, but suffice it to say that I definitely had a lot in common with the cartoon character of the same name yesterday. I spent about 15 hours with my backpack on traveling all across the United States trying to get home. Now I realize that geography isn't one of my strong suits, but I don't think The Map would advise anyone to go from Buffalo to D.C. to Chicago to get to Memphis... Anyway, it all began with my original US Airways flight from Charlotte to Memphis getting canceled due to runway repair (that's a new one). Therefore, I had to rebook on United and was supposed to travel from Buffalo to Washington-Dulles to Memphis. This would have landed me at home 3 hours earlier than my originally scheduled arrival time (sweet!). However, after we boarded the flight to D.C., we soon learned that their airport was not allowing any more planes to land because they were backed up (isn't that what their entire purpose is?!?). So, we just sat on the plane for an hour and 45 minutes and I ended up missing my connecting flight by 5 minutes. And lucky me, there were no more flights to Memphis the rest of the day, so I had to hop on a shuttle bus to another concourse to see if they would let me on the Chicago flight. Luckily, I was able to get on board this huge plane where I was entertained by an interactive flight map and free music channels. When I get to Chicago, there's yet another delay because our plane to Memphis is late and then needs to be serviced. In the meantime, their staff waits 45 minutes for the late arriving passengers on the Fargo flight which is also departing from our gate (watch and learn, Washington-Dulles!). When we finally get to board 3o minutes later, we sit on the plane for 45 minutes because they felt that other flights needed to leave before us. When I finally arrive in Memphis, it takes me 45 more minutes to get my suitcase because it landed 4 hours earlier on my orignally scheduled flight from D.C. Needless to say, I'm not going to be flying United again anytime soon.