Nothing like an early morning flight to remind you how precious sleep is.

Over years of intermittent early morning flights, I have come to rely on my internal alarm clock.

I don’t rely on it so much that I don’t set an actual alarm, mind you. But inevitably, I wake before the clock chimes the hour. I rouse myself no matter how sleepy I am when there is something important to be done. Like catching a flight.

I used to travel enthusiastically. I am not sure what has taken off the edge of excitement. These days I dread travel like I used to dread going to the dentist. Given my druthers these days, I think I’d happily hop in a dental chair.

I’ve been to a lot of places in the world, so there’s that. But no, I think it is that the overall quality of travel has dipped precipitously. My recent flight plans were a shining example.

Flying Leg #1 from North to South was straightforward enough. But at a central hub on the Eastern US seaboard, Mother Nature had her own secret plans for a messed up travel day. A messed up heyday, in fact. Thunderstorms. Complete with thunder and lighting. Travel cyanide.

I have to admire how cleverly the airlines handle such disruptions these days in their own best interests. There was a time when the merest hint of bad weather would shut down flights. The airline would hie its’ passengers off to a nearby hotel with meal vouchers to ride out the storm. Ancient history.

Instead, the airline’s tactic today is to keep passengers baited and on the hook. “We regret to inform you your flight will be delayed by one hour. It is now departing from Gate Whatever at whatever time one hour from now is.”

The same email and text message gets sent out hour after hour after hour. It keeps people dangling and on the hook. Clustered sleepily in the airport waiting lounge sipping bad coffee and chewing on hope.

To be fair, the airline finally made a humanitarian offering of “hydration and refreshments”: warm bottled water and Goldfish pretzels. You’d be within your rights to see the close comparison to the “bread and water” regimen they once served incarcerated prisoners as punishment.

Until finally, when pilots can no longer safely fly because they have passed the allowable FAA regulations deadline, the airline cancels the flight. I don’t know what people do or what happens to them when that happens. I didn’t stick around to find out.

Operating on fumes, I finally bailed at around 7 PM to find a hotel room for the night. I would have felt foolish if my flight actually made it out that night. Luckily it didn’t and I didn’t feel foolish. I awoke this morning to find a text message advising all passengers at close to midnight: “The flight has been cancelled.”

Ominously I had been checked into Room 911 at the hotel. That was particularly ominous in light of today’s chilling anniversary. It was a minor nuisance to learn there was no bathtub, so I asked for a room change. Thus I avoided two undesirable scenarios and my uncomfortable feeling.

There was an eeriness in seeing the room number 911 assignment in a Washington, DC hotel exactly 22 years after the fact. And a “shower only” bathroom. I’m old school and need a bath to relax. Especially after a travel day like this.

The flakiness I sometimes exhibit both confounds and comforts me by times. So many had so many more feels to wrangle on this horrible anniversary and likely still do. But damn, travel is different. No room service. “Only at dinnertime,” said the chipper young thing at the front desk.

I pleaded illness and incapacity to get a basic breakfast delivered. (“Oh, we can give you a mask when you come down.” CYT offered, cheerily.) The whitener served with the coffee was totally oversold. It barely turned the coffee a dark mocha to say nothing of the host of chemicals that cannot be good for man nor beast.

I am about to go all Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz on myself after this necessary travel jaunt. “There’s no place like home!” At least, I can count on a full breakfast any time of the day or night and a readily available bathtub to soak away the cares of the day.

Travel was once the playground of adventure, learning and tolerable inconveniences. These days it is a passage through purgatory to get to wherever it is you absolutely want or need to get to.

Purgatory is a polite way of putting it. Occasionally it can be hell on earth.

Yesterday’s travel came perilously close to that.

Ask anyone who was waiting all day yesterday to board Flight 4424.

Which, of course, they never did.