SO I’M BACK. I was supposed to get back Monday evening, but my Delta jet returned from the runway on Grand Cayman with a bad flight computer. They couldn’t fix it, and I wound up spending an extra night on Cayman. Which wasn’t as good as it sounds because I spent a lot of time waiting in lines or in airport lounges. They flew us out Tuesday morning, and I was supposed to have a confirmed seat on the 3:15 flight for Knoxville, but when I got to Atlanta that confirmed seat had mysteriously become a standby seat on an oversold plane. Wound up renting a car and driving home, rather than risk taking a much later flight and, possibly, being stuck overnight in Atlanta. Thanks to the folks at the Holiday Inn Resort Grand Cayman, who put up about 200 stranded passengers on short notice and were quite hospitable. This wasn’t exactly Delta’s fault — you can’t fly with a bad flight computer — but I did feel that they ran us through too many unnecessary hoops and lines. (They bused us to the airport Tuesday at 5 am, but there was nobody at their ticket counter until 6:15, costing us about 200 hours of unnecessarily lost sleep in total. . . ) I found the counter people in Atlanta pretty much useless, but Delta Assist on Twitter helped me out by canceling my Atlanta-Knoxville leg and refunding that portion, which covered the rental car — a very reasonably priced ($122) Audi A4 from Sixt.

This is my second overnight stranding in a month, though, which makes me feel less cheerful about flying in general. Anyway, I’m tanned, rested, and ready. Thanks to my guestbloggers for doing an excellent job while I spent some much-needed time offline (and this seems like it was a good week to miss), and for helping out an additional day while I was stranded. I honestly think the blog’s better when they’re around, so after this bravura performance, I’ve invited them to drop by and put up a post whenever the mood strikes.