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This is long but very good.........

Unable to make the show, a thought NASCAR drivers perish, is what prompted me to share with you readers the series of unfortunate events that nearly forced me, and dozens of key characters in the show, to miss the opening acts at Watkins Glen this weekend.
If you’ve ever seen the movie Planes, Trains and Automobiles then you have a good idea of what happened and what dozens of others working in NASCAR went through to get to Watkins Glen, located in upstate New York, where the weather and air traffic has been as volatile as Tony Stewart during a post-race interview.

The melee began at 1 p.m. ET on Thursday at the Charlotte, N.C., airport starring myself, two NASCAR driver public relations reps and a brake specialist.

Unbeknownst to them while boarding a plane to LaGuardia Airport, the quartet, who arrived separately, would ultimately spend the next 15 hours traversing inclement weather and bottlenecked airlines transportation together.

Why? To make the show of course, because when you’re Denny Darnell, Kasey Kahne’s public relations manager, you have to be there, as does Jade Gurss, who handles publicity for Earnhardt — and you know how popular Junior is. And the brake specialist, well he offers tech support for Brembo brakes for the Nos. 24 and 48. So yeah, he felt it necessary to make the show as well.

As for me, well I suppose their vigilance rubbed off on me a bit, because had I not hooked up with the determined travelers, I’d still be in Charlotte, not Watkins Glen, N.Y.

So ...

1 p.m. — I board the plane, wave to Denny sitting in first class (nice) and take my seat with the groundlings in economy class. Jade was two rows behind me likely working on how many different ways to say no to the onslaught of media requests the man receives for Earnhardt.

1:50 p.m. — Pilot comes over the intercom to indicate the line is too long to take off and we need to refuel anyway, and so we were headed back to the gate. I turned and looked at Jade and laughed.

2 p.m. — Our plane gets a splash and go, but actually we don’t GO anywhere. Apparently flights to and from LaGuardia are delayed, nothing is moving so we deplane. OK, no big deal. What is a big deal is that we don’t re-board the plane until 5 p.m. Still, all is not lost. At the advice of Gurss and his platinum gold card rewards plus mega miles flyer club membership, we rebook for a later flight, as does Denny.

5 p.m. — We board only to sit for 15 minutes and only to get in a long line of planes also waiting to take off. But before we make any real progress, Denny comes back to Jade and me and says, “Hate to be the bearer of bad news gang but our connecting flight to Ithaca is canceled.” OK, still no big deal, we can always catch a later flight or if anything fly out in the morning.

7 p.m. — We arrive in LaGuardia. First thing, I check the board for flights to Ithaca while Jade stands in line to inquire about lodgings. There are flights remaining to Ithaca, however, they have big fat CANCELED flashing in red next to them. Jade, being the upbeat polite character in the story, pleads with the airline representative to find us another flight. Her response: I can put you on a flight at 3:45 p.m. Friday.

Hmmm, well gee, lets see, that’s after Cup practice and qualifying so that won’t work. Now everyone is completely panicked.

9 p.m. — Jade to the rescue with his rental car rewards platinum plus gold medallion club frequent driver membership that provides us with an option, an option that will ultimately provide me with hours of priceless NASCAR entertainment.

“If we can get our bags and they aren’t being sent on to Ithaca, I guess we could drive. It’s only about 300 miles.”

Ah, 10-4 Jade, as long as you’re driving. We head to baggage where we find Denny flustered beyond belief having what sounded to be a deep conversation with an automated system of some sort.

http://www.nascar.com/2007/news/opinion/08/10/rswan.traveling.watkins.glen/story_single.html#page2

^^^^There’s more, I don’t even have time to read it all^^^^^