The worst trip I've ever had

Remember the trip that began with the three-hour seatbelt light and the excruciating pain, and the two-hour delay for a 38-minute flight? It got better.

The first day was fine, until about 11 at night, when I began feeling the first symptoms of what can only be relatively mild food poisoning. Finally, at 3 a.m. after revisiting all of my dinner, lunch, and breakfast in that order, I managed to get to sleep. Of course I skipped the first half of my meetings which started at 8 a.m., but with PowerAde in hand I managed to attend the 10-12 portion. Then on to the airport for the return journey. By now I was feeling OK enough to eat a banana and half a plain bagel, so I thought my troubles were behind me.

Don't you hate this boarding by "zones" thing airlines are doing now? What is this? Zones seem arbitrarily defined and, in my experience, have significantly slowed the boarding process. I think they must put you in a zone based on how many flight miles you have with the airline. On this flight, I was in zone 8, so I was the third-to-last to board. Of course, this meant that my rollaboard bag had to be gate checked through to San Francisco. I had specifically not checked the bag so I could (a) make sure it did not get lost and (b) not have to wait for it at SFO before my hour-and-a-half train ride home.

They lost my luggage.

So not only did I wait at SFO for the LAST BAG block to tumble onto the carousel, but then I had to spend 20 extra minutes informing them mine was lost. They promised to deliver it this morning, but their web site says "Bag Status: We have not received any updates on this bag."

Finally got home just before midnight. This is definitely the worst trip I've ever taken for business. And I will never, ever, ever fly Delta again even though I had a wonderful experience a year ago going from DC through Salt Lake to SFO.