There'll be a slight delay

Nonetheless, it's good to be back.

Let's get into it. Air travel is not for the weak.

Our flight going out there was uneventful. Seriously, it went so smoothly that I barely remember how I got to Phoenix.

But trust me when I tell you that I'll always remember the flight home.

I flew Delta. It's normally a very reliable airline and, truth be told, it got us home ... eventually.

But let's start from the beginning. Remember after 9/11, our esteemed commander and decider and his group of merry maniacs came up with the idea of color coding our fear? So we started out our trip with a greeting from the Transportation Security Administration, whose sign stated Sunday's threat level was at "orange."

That means that the risk of a terrorist attack is "high," but not so high that we have to go to the "red" level, which means we are under supposedly "severe" risk of a terrorist attack.

Don't know why we had an orange alert on Sunday, but it took a particularly long time to get through security. But hey, better safe than

Finally, we got through the scanning and wanding and pawing over our stuff at the security checkpoint and we found a place to grab some breakfast and sit for a while.

We discovered fairly quickly that our plane wasn't even at the gate yet, so we were more than likely not to take off on time.

We weren't in a terrible rush, so it wasn't a big deal. We ended up leaving 15 minutes late and that's not so bad. The pyrotechnics started when we landed at JFK a half-hour early.

Now for those of you that haven't traveled into a major airport lately, arriving early means that you don't have a gate yet. So you sit on the tarmac and wait. And wait we did.

Normally, at Bradley or Manchester, arriving early is a good thing. Not so much at JFK.

Thirty minutes into it, people started to grumble because, after all, we were at our original time of arrival now.

The pilot made his announcement that we're going to be another 5 to 10 minutes which means we're not getting off the plane for another 20.

A half-hour after the first "we're going to have to wait another 5 to 10 minutes" announcement, he made another "we're going to have to wait another 5 to 10 minutes" announcement.

The groans came out from all over the plane because after all we should be on our way home at this point.

You know the old saying there's one in every crowd. Well the one in this crowd was sitting across the aisle and one row in back of me. He started yelling over the announcement, "Hey, why don't youse guys start handin' out free drinks or sumthin?"

Needless to say, he was a native New Yorker. "Why don't youse guys just get one of dem portable staircases and we'll walk off dis plane right now?"

We all took a gang mentality with this guy and he shut up for a few minutes.

But it was only for a few minutes. Another five minutes ticked off the clock and, lucky for the rest of us, he had a cell phone. And he wasn't afraid to use it.

The first call was to his wife or significant sufferer. "Hey, I'm stuck on dis plane and it don't look like I'm gettin' off any time soon... Yeah, I'm calling Jerry right now and I'm telling him to lower da price on da house, because we're outta dis rathole."

Next up was Jerry the Real Estate Agent. "Jerry, look dis is what you're doing first ting tomorra you're gonna lower da price of the house 50 to 100 grand, I can't freggin' take it anymore, you got dat?"

I've removed all the swearing and really cut this short because this guy talked to Jerry all the way to baggage claim.

So, after 90 minutes, we were finally off the plane. And as annoying as it was, I certainly wasn't about to spill my personal life out to the 100 people that were in earshot. This is not the time to scream out loud. What the hell is up with that?

Fish is the morning talent on Classic Hits 92.7 FM. He also offers up his opinion on-line at www.whatdahell.net. E-mail him at fish@wkvt.com.