long flight to a cold landing

for those who don't know... i'm in school for my next rank advancement in the army. the school is at ft. meade, maryland, the same school i attended 9 years ago for my basic broadcasting training. not much has changed, but 9 years is a long time to forget what a place is like. and with class not starting until monday... i have a couple days to settle in and remember this place. i do recall that the school is great, but getting here yesterday was not so great.
here's the breakdown:

0600 flight out of pdx headed to salt lake city. the early flight time meant getting to the airport around 0430, which meant not really sleeping that night.

0900 i get to salt lake city only to find out my flight to baltimore was cancelled. i'll let that set in because it took me off guard and i was checking every screen possible to make sure i wasn't seeing things or the screen wasn't just wrong. nope... officially cancelled. not a big deal when you're in your home-state airport, but when you're only one leg through your trip it kinda sucks.

1000 they re-route us onto a flight to dulles without saying why or anything. i figured at least i'd be on the east coast to closer to my destination, whatever.

0500 pm we finally land at dulles - one hour after i was supposed to land in baltimore. it was when we landed that we were told our luggage was flown to reagan national airport. nice delta airlines, real nice. our consolation prize was two taxi vouchers to drive us from dulles to reagan then to baltimore.

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dulles to reagan to get baggage - 1 hour
reagan to military base - 1 more hour
taxi fair - $200 (on delta airlines dime)
arriving at my school - priceless

that was just getting here. once on post i had to report in. easy enough... except when all the numbers and building numbers are wrong. i walked about 6 miles in circles in the freezing cold on the post trying to find where to check in. two hours later and 36 hours without sleep i finally reached someone who could help me out. i can only hope the school works out better.