Grumpy Santa seems quite startled by a hard landing; but notice his seatmate is cool as a cucumber. Better relax, Santa; you have a lot of landings ahead of you.

Fortunately, he is distracted by a magazine article on Richard Branson, who is soon going to be testing the limits…with dogs??

Better click “more” to see the video.

Here’s the latest: I wasn’t feeling so hot when I got into Billings, Montana last night; so my colleagues arranged for me to see a doctor, AND, even better, they cut today’s schedule way down.

I’m afraid we’re losing some states from my epic journey, but between the 10-hours of sleep I had and the antibiotics, I’m a new man! Well, no, I’m still a slightly run-down, unshaven, disheveled man, but I am doing better.

Anyway, the doctor’s visit was the finale of a terrible day…the worst of it? The Very Worst? Click “more” if you dare…

Yes, it’s true. They shut down the airport in Milwaukee, and Grumpy Santa is temporarily out of action.

But at least he’s in Wisconsin. Perhaps he’ll enjoy a nice cheese platter. Perhaps he’ll savor the subtle bouquet of a glass of Old Milwaukee.

“Perhaps I’ll go to bed early-at least, for once on this trip!” snarled Grumpy Santa.

See Grumpy Santa in the first snow of his trip. See Grumpy Santa snarl.

For a guy who supposedly hangs out at the North Pole most of the year, his reaction is a trifle surprising.

Especially since all those nice folks in Boston are trying their best to make him feel at home: listen as they call out, “Merry Christmas!” and, “Go Red Sox!” (Uh-oh, more snarling. You See, Grumpy Santa is a Cubs fan).

And if you watch very carefully, you’ll notice the camera getting clobbered with a snowball. No doubt an old Bostonian custom meaning, “We love you, Grumpy Santa!”

Here’s the latest: Grumpy Santa is stuck in blizzardy Boston, but he needs to get to New York City (we hope to show our hero frolicking in Times Square).

UPDATE FROM GRUMPY SANTA: “Watch out for the video of the snowstorm. It should be up today or tomorrow. Also, pay attention and try to see if you catch the moment when our fearless director gets hit by an errant snowball.”

Anyway, he’s got his orders: Onward to Amtrak! Unfortunately, all the “good” trains (the express ones) are full so Santa’s stuck with a local. It’ll take him more than 4-hours to get to Penn Station. Meantime, some bad news…

Finally we got the Continental cancellation sorted out. But we had to do it in person (Grumpy Santa and his director did the honors); I never could get through on Continental’s 800-number (busy, busy, busy).

Our problem: Continental canceled its Newark to Charleston flight last night, then canceled its Boston to Newark flight this morning. As you can see from Grumpy Santa’s itinerary, that really messed us up…

Grumpy Santa has just missed a connection. And the airline has been giving him a hard time about getting a refund.

Santa got nowhere when he called the refund department on his own. But, finally, one of the airline’s customer service agents called the refund department on his behalf and got it all straightened out.

But in the course of straightening this out, Grumpy Santa could actually hear this refund department person slam the 800 number process on missed connections!

The employee’s message was clear: don’t do what the airline says to do in this particular case, which is…call the airline’s 800 number. Use a local agent to help you get it done, have them make the call … And by all means keep each and every document and note the conversation…

Click “more” to hear all about this wild time.

Oh, and look for the two gents who are closely following Santa’s antics; darned if they don’t look a little like Santas themselves!

I did most of my ranting in my “Delay Post,” so I’m going to lay off the daily rant and keep this one positive.So, I missed the Providence flight.

But I swear to the good people of Rhode Island, if it’s the only state I have missed as this thing starts to come to an end, I will make it there.

I know for a fact the folks back at home are already concocting mad schemes to make it happen. After the Providence delay I ran into some problems with US Airways.

Since I missed that flight, I missed the first leg (out of Providence back to Philadelphia) of a two-leg journey (I’m flying on from Philadelphia to Burlington, VT).

Once you miss the first leg of a trip, you’re automatically canceled for the following leg.

This is not looking good…and it only got worse….

There are moments when you simply step back and say to yourself, “This isn’t really happening. This can’t be real life.”

Last night, I had such a moment. Here’s what happened:

Our flight from New Hampshire to Philadelphia was delayed for well over two hours

The plane was there, the crew was ready, but weather in Philly was holding things up. We had a great time with the Southwest crew during the delay, but we (along with FareCompare HQ) were monitoring the US Airways flight I was supposed to catch from Philadelphia to Providence, Rhode Island (PVD).

Would Rhode Island become my…Waterloo???

Not the charger per se, but it’s hard-shelled emotionless case. This unthinking, uncaring, unmoving hunk of reinforced plastic has brought such added strain into my life that this morning when I woke up I actually thought about hurling it out the hotel window. Then I realized the window was one of those motel jobs that doesn’t open.

Oh, how I hated this thing. So what DID I do???

Graeme (our CTO) and I spent the day planning out the last little issues on the itinerary and then the first major bump in the road …

There basically are no seats left from Alaska to anywhere the week before Christmas, not even first class. It seems no one wants to be in Alaska for Christmas …

We tried literally hundreds of permutations to/from Anchorage, Juneau and Ketchikan we just couldn’t get 2 seats for less than 2k and that was going to break what little bank there was. A quick check of prices to Hawaii after Dec 18 showed the $1500 roundtrip range on every non-stop anywhere in the country.

I’ll be honest — I was crushed.

I had just purchased the first three days of tickets on Sunday and the next 5 days earlier this morning and in hind-sight we should have took on Hawaii and Alaska first while the prices where reasonable right now - after some soul searching we decided the contiguous 48 + DC would have to do.

Besides we never really recognized the entry of AK and HI into the union (just kidding - send your flame e-mails to Graeme)

Graeme (out CTO) and I have completed several links of the chain for purchasing tickets, all done with tentative pricing; we are not happy with a few of the airfares, but we are simply going to have to bite the bullet on price in a few locations (if we had more time we could do some proper mileage runs).

Scraps of paper filled with writing are lying all around my office, while 3-different computers are crunching schedules and pricing. It is a complete zoo — I had no idea what a pain this was going to be — and we are both working on 4 hours of sleep a night, but,it finally looks like we have it all coming together…