From: Mike N. 

Well, I'm back in the USA from my Swiss project!  A portion of the project
will continue in the USA, but other than that my on-site involvement has
ended.

   My trip back was the most rigorous ever.   I've travelled probably
400,000 airline miles total.  But I'm 0 for 4 of the last 4 trips back to
the US from Zurich in less than 24 hours.  3 of those 4 were through
Newark.   I'd get there and the connection to home would be either
mysteriously changed, cancelled, or weather'd out.   Usually, I'd be able
to wrangle a hotel stay, so the trip would take 2 days but not be too bad
otherwise.  Yesterday, I navigated a close connection only to find that the
connecting flight was cancelled.  They rescheduled me on the 6:45 and the
skies were blue and clear so I wasn't too worried.  There are many funny
substories here, but the final result is that I spent the night in the
terminal after the flight made it out to the tarmac and we sat there for 3
hours until the flight was cancelled.     The last cancellation was
storm-related so the whole of Newark was a zoo.  I was extremely lucky to
get a series of breaks that led to the last standby seat back home early
this morning.   Prior to that, they best they could offer was a seat 2 days
later on Saturday afternoon, on the same flight that I've learned gets
cancelled at the drop of a hat.

   The gate and service personnel get very quiet when asked why flights are
cancelled.  It's quite obvious that they cut the flight at the last minute
if it doesn't have enough customers to be profitable.

   I got a chance to do some great sightseeing at the end while cleaning up
loose ends before coming back.   I tried to go somewhere every weekend -
most of it was in Switzerland, but in general around France, Germany, Italy, Austria.

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