We strapped in, heard the now familiar evacuation speech, which includes instructions for proper ‘smoke hood’ operation – something missing on commercial flights. With smoke hoods safely stowed and seat belts fastened, all systems were go and our giant cargo plane started to roll for the runway.

Suddenly, the plane stopped. Of course. Things were going too smoothly. Something just HAD to go wrong. Mechanics started running up and down, but the engines were still running. Hmm… maybe something minor had gone wrong, as long as the engines were running, I was sure it wouldn’t take long to fix.

And I believed that all the way until I saw a guy grab a ladder, climb up one of the walls and start peering at and probing the many wires going every which way.

Then I knew we were in for a long wait. Still, we were technically ahead of schedule, because usually we wait until Germany to break our airplane. Last year we had tires blow out on landing (talk about fun!) and had to change planes. Evidently it’s faster to change planes than it is to change tires.

But this didn’t look like a simple tire change problem. This looked serious. Some kind of navigation equipment failure. It’s definitely a good idea to have properly operating navigational gear when flying into a war zone… we all understood that.

So we sat. Someone quickly found the beer storage, and within an hour, all the beer, wine, water and food meant to last the entire trip was gone. Entertainment was provided by some of the wrestlers having impromptu matches, which was funny and interesting for a while.

Things were looking good around 4 AM when they announced they were going to power the plane down and then back to see if the problem was solved. Kind of like rebooting, we sat there in the darkness for five minutes.

The next announcement seemed like more good news. Even though we hadn’t flown anywhere, the engines had been working most of the time, so we needed to refuel.

But then the bad news hit. The reboot hadn’t helped. And now the flight crew was getting into the period where they can no longer fly… so… our 1 AM flight was finally scrubbed – at 6 AM.

Our luggage was offloaded, we dropped our company provided sleeping bags in a pile, loaded ourselves on a bus and headed for the Hawthorne Suites. How the WWE travel department managed to find fifty vacant rooms at 6 AM is beyond me, but somehow they did. We were told that we would try for a 9:45 PM flight the next day. Unbelievable. We haven’t even left and already we are a day behind. As I’ve said in the past, it’s no wonder the military uses a 24 hour clock, because it takes them twice as long as it should to do anything.

But, no matter. There was nothing I could do about it. Falling asleep after this ordeal wasn’t a problem at all. A bed never felt so comfortable. One advantage to this delay, we were already acclimating to Iraq time, eight hours behind Eastern Standard… gotta look on the bright side!

Our marching orders for the next day were slipped under our door during the night (or should I say during the day, since we didn’t get into bed until 7AM.)

Aww. That Hawthorne Inn Manager. How thoughtful to provide more beer and wine to the WWE members! But I just had to laugh at one thing on the notice though:

Please Be Not Be Late? OK! I Be Not Be Will Be Not Be Late!! That Be No Problem!

We’re going to try again tonight. Hopefully the Spirit of Southwest Airlines has been fixed, or another of the fifty or so empty planes has been pressed into service.

More to follow.