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Joe Trippi's Bad Travel Day

By Jeralyn, Section Elections
Posted on Sun Dec 28, 2003 at 01:00:00 PM EST
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We've had bad travel days, but Joe Trippi's recent experience sounds like a real nightmare:

On his way from Iowa to Washington, D.C., to appear on ABC's "This Week With George Stephanopoulos," Trippi was stuck on the airport tarmac in Chicago for more than two hours Saturday night, eventually missing all the flights to D.C., because there were no gates available.

Determined to have him on the air, ABC chartered a plane to fly him in, but the only one they could find was in Cincinnati, and it couldn't pick him up until 1 a.m. That should have been plenty of time for Trippi to collect his luggage and get to the private terminal, but the airline had lost his bags.

He arrived in Washington at dawn, luggage-less, wearing his usual rumpled outfit. At the Mayflower Hotel, the concierge told Trippi he was in luck: Filene's Basement was having a pre-Christmas sale at 7:30 a.m., so he could buy a suit there before his TV appearance.

Trippi set his alarm to get one hour of sleep, then rushed over to the off-price store -- only to find it didn't open until 9 a.m. on weekends. Desperate, he rushed back to the Mayflower and begged the concierge to look in the lost and found for any suitable attire. He was in luck. There was a crisp blue blazer, just his size. He bought a cheap shirt off a street vendor, found a crumpled tie at the bottom of his briefcase and made it to the studio just in time.

By Sunday night, he was already in New Hampshire, where, over Thai food, he regaled his staff and the press corps with the story of his arduous journey. But the day wasn't over. After dinner, he hit the road to make it back to the Dean headquarters in Burlington, Vt., by morning.
And he still had to ship the blazer back to the hotel, just in case the owner came to claim it.

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