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.