Although a young community, Flyertalk is nonetheless steeped in tradition. One of our cherished traditions is to cyberly gather at the end of each year and play Humiliation to expose ourselves to ridicule.

The game is played by sharing your worst travel related error or miscalculation. Examples might include: forgetting to pack your suit for that job interview; getting arrested by TSA for an off-handed joke; flying a million miles before enrolling in a frequent flyer program; crashing your rental car into your bosses new BMW at a sales� meeting.

Previous incarnations of this game can be viewed at:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum95/HTML/000599.html

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum95/HTML/001632.html

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum95/HTML/002838.html

Humiliation is traditionally played in the Community Forum instead of OMNI because it is an old-fashioned parlor game. And, as in all games, a winner is declared. So, go forth and out yourselves.

I like to start off the game to get folks into the spirit, although I am never a contender amongst all you stars. Also, I�ve have been uncharacteristically free of no-brainers this year:

Perhaps for the last year ever, I can still claim to have driven more miles, lifetime, than I have flown.

I called Customer Service at Hyatt when they took too few points out for an award stay.

I AM SUCH A SUCKER!!!!!

Not 2003, but not previously posted.

Forgot dark socks to go with suit, etc., for a critical presentation to one of the largest Silicon Valley software firms.

Left my room with no socks, figuring that was less conspicuous than white socks (and might even, in that environment, be taken as some sort of fashion statement).

Fortunately, the gift shop at the SFO Hyatt opened at 7 am and had the necessary item.

I was coming back from the November London Do on US in envoy class. I had the window seat in row 2 and a 50-something "proper" Brit was sitting next to me. He had on Gucci shoes and probably was on a full fare ticket. During the afternoon, he decided to take a nap so he reclined in his chair and put his eyeshades on. I decided to get something out of my bag in the overhead so I climbed over his feet, went to open the overhead, and accidentally, a blanket fell out and dropped on him. He was startled and jumped up. I just kept saying, "I'm so sorry."

Just this week:

Flew int0 DFW at 20:30 aiming to get on AA90 at 06:00 the next morning. Checked into a hotel, had a couple in the bar retired at 22:30 and booked a wake up call for 03:30.

At 06:10 called front desk to ask what happened to my wake up call.

At 06:30 got off the phone to AA, having rebooked onto flight 50 at 17:00.

At 06:40 checked my cell phone to find not one but 6 missed calls from my other half.

At 09:00, on checking out, apologised to front desk for blaming them for my too sound sleep.

Doh!

Worst ever travel miscalculation? Doesn't have to be from the last year, or airflight related? Well then....

As a 16 year old newly licensed driver, and new to the highways, a buddy and I left Houston, Texas for a rock climbing trip to the Texas hill country - about 5 hours away.

We wore ourselves out that weekend, and Sunday evening we packed up to travel back to Houston. After a few hours on the road I realized I took a wrong turn at a highway junction and we would soon be entering Dallas!!

Being young, poor, and not great planners, we barely had enough cash between us to pay for the additional gas to get back to Houston. Instead of being in bed by midnight - we rolled into Houston with just enough time to shower and get to school.

Needless to say, I quickly learned how to read maps and signs. I racked up more than a half million touring miles in the next 10 years.

Travel Trick #2

I worked for a famous Boy Scout camp teaching rock climbing. I didn't bring my car to camp that year for fear of damage from the rocky fire roads. Everyone at the outpost camps worked a 6 days on, 2 days off schedule plus had some evenings off during the "on" days.

A climbing buddy of mine and I each traded our vacation days around untill we each had an 18 day block of vacation. That ment working straight through most of the summer, but realize we still had evenings off to head into town.

One of my college lacrosse pals ran the Conservation department. He had a few trucks and a utility type 4WD Suburban assigned to his department. I asked very innocently to borrow the Suburban for the length of my vacation days - forgetting to mention that I had a much longer than normal vacation. As expected of a pal, he said yes!

That was IT! We drove all over the Rockies, through Utah, Wyoming, NewMexico and Colorado visiting the fabulous climbing locations we'd read about in adventure magazines. Even got to climb Devil's Tower before they banned technical climbing on it.

Well, my pal, the conservation director was a little worried about us when the Suburban wasn't returned after a couple days. After a couple more days he called my supervisor and asked if I had made it back or if he had heard any word from me. The conservation director explained that he had loaned me a truck for use during my vacation, and hadn't heard from me for four days. My boss started laughing! He told the director that I had arranged to take 18 days straight and that I was roaming the western USA!

When the trip was over and I returned the Suburban the conservation director was HOT HOT HOT. Not because he was out his truck, but because most of the camp staff had heard about the trick we pulled on him and they reminded him about it every evening at dinner. He was the butt of a thousand jokes and taunts.

After that stunt, the rules regarding vacation swapping and Camp vehicle use changed. No doubt!

Goes to show that I've always been looking for that extra travel value for a looooong time.

I was flying to PHL for an interview, I wasnt paying attention to dates when i booked the flights. I get to the airport the evening before my Interview, when checking in the agent tells me that my flight is the next day!! Needless to say, for a nominal fee they allowed me to fly that evening, the plane was basically empty, so i made it to my interview, but i felt like a total moron.

My first visit to Colorado my roommate and I decided to visit my Godfather who had just moved in himself a couple months ago. Borrowing his truck for the weekend to go skiing, he told us to take a nice off-road trail through the mountains first.

What he didn't realize is that people don't go offroading up 10,000+ feet mountains in early March in Colorado.

I must admit, it was a little strange to see so much snow at the start of the trail, but we kept trucking on. As we ascended the trail--which was supposed to just go about 12 miles up, and then 12 miles down the other side--the amount of snow on the ground begand to increase rapidly. At one point about 8 miles and about an hour into driving I slowed down to take a sharp turn when we got stuck on a patch of black ice under the snow.

What was worse is that as I accelerated to try and remove myself from this position, the ...-end of the truck slid closer and closer to the edge of the mountain, which would have sent his truck long-gone down the mountain.

In the 2 minutes that we spent outside trying to rock the truck out of it's place my roommate and I were so terribly cold that we were both shaking. Then the clouds blew over and it started to snow.

Long story short(er): by some miracle, I had ONE bar of analog service on my cell phone which i used to call my godfather and explain that I had gotten his brand new truck stuck in the mountains. After calling AAA to see if they would go offroading to rescue me, they said they would. Apparently, they made it about half-way up the trail, and said "**** this, it's too dangerous" and turned back. While driving back they told the police that they had saved us.

With my last bit of battery in my phone, I called back to find out what the status was because after-all, I'd been sitting for 4 hours in the cold. He realized that AAA wasn't coming, and we had to pay close to $400 to get towed out by an extreme towing company.

All in all, we spent 8 cold (and at times scary) hours in the cold. Thank god for the cell phone though, otherwise we would have had to risk venturing out in that awful storm 8 miles down a mountain to try and get help.

Not the brightest thing I've ever done...

Okay, I'll play. Back in the days when Eastern Airlines ran those Moonlight Specials (or whatever they were called) where they carried cargo for CF in A300s and allowed passengers with ONLY carry-on luggage for VERY cheap coast to coast overnight fares, my wife and I planned a trip where we would drive from Florida (via Alabama) to Atlanta, then fly from there connecting in Texas on our way to San Francisco. When I got to the counter in Atlanta to check-in for our flights, we discovered that our travel agent had issued the tickets for the night BEFORE (and therefore according to the airline we had missed our flights by 24 hours). I suspect someone got the date wrong when issuing the tickets due to the flight departure time being JUST AFTER midnight. After some intense questioning by the check-in agent who determined that it was an honest mistake, they allowed us to standby for the entire trip, but advised us that while we would have no problem getting on the Atlanta to Houston leg of the flight, the Houston to San Franciso leg was entirely sold out and they made it VERY clear that if we were not able to get on THAT NIGHT's flight to San Francisco, they would have no further responsibility to get us to San Francisco or put us up in Houston until the NEXT night's Moonlight special flight which we could standby for again. Fortunately, once we got to Houston, there WERE enough no-shows to allow us to get on the flight to San Francisco, but since then I have ALWAYS been paranoid about double-checking our actual ticket dates versus our travel plans.

(Edited for spelling.)

[This message has been edited by rtpflyer (edited Dec 05, 2003).]

Well, let's see. I was in Palm Springs on business and decided to stay over a final night. Got up the next morning and had TONS of time for my 1:05 pm flight. So, after a leisurely breakfast, I decided to drive out of town and take the tram up the mountain to see the ancient forest.

So that's what I did, leaving myself plenty of time to get back to the airport, return my car to the rental agency, and get to the airport for my flight.

I thought I knew how to get back to the airport, but I missed my turn and continued driving out of town... waaay out of town.

By the time I got to the car rental agency it was barely time to get to the airport. They hauled out all the stops and sent a van driver with me alone, to the terminal.

But, even though I got there at 1:10, the plane had left on time, and I was left behind.

I was so nervous. The ticket was non-refundable, paid by my employer. I figured "this is going to cost". So I showed my ticket to the desk agent and asked what she could do for me.

Oh, she said, there's a commuter flight leaving in 15 minutes that I could get you on. (I was going from Palm Springs to Salt Lake City)

I asked what it would cost me, and she said, "Oh, I can do it on this ticket."

Saved!

Rental cars - let's just say that a Ford Taurus does great in loose sand and gravel, while a Mustang GT does not. Luckily, AAA saved me!

Thanks to being unemployed most all year, I flew less than 100K miles in 2003. So in 2004 (til I catch up again) I'll suffer the humiliation of not being at the top level of 2 or 3 airlines for the first time in a long time.

Same situation as stimpy, except going from UA 1P to 2P!!! Horrors. Add in the fact that I'm now a poor student -- in philosophy of all things (how useful is that? ), so I'm likely to get kicked down to roach level for 2005 ...

This summer, I cut my head on the corner of a "low-hanging" sign at my local Safeway... even after looking at it and judging that I would clear it.