After being caught in such incredible delays during the winter, I would have thought that flying in America in the summer wouldn't be much trouble. I was wrong. Every time I fly I seem to want to do it again slightly less.

I'd been in Virginia at Susi's for five days, in an area of the country that alternates between blazing heat and thunderstorms, and had been very grateful to the country for inventing air conditioning (and more locally, having an outdoor pool), and was due to get back to reality and Boston during the day on Tuesday, going on a small propeller plane to La Guardia in New York and then onwards in two hour-long flights. We saw the flight was delayed, with no time given, from the front of the tiny little security desk at Charlottesville, but I thought that it was just to avoid the possibility of storms while taking off - when I got through, though, they quickly announced that the tiny plane wasn't allowed to fly to La Guardia because the storm was now more severe there, and that they would have to wait a few more hours for it to be cleared by air traffic control.

Unusually for me, I wasn't particularly bothered about this because I had a wall socket and the entire Internet in my hands, and even though the whole collection of knowledge (and cat pictures) of humanity becomes surprisingly boring when you're in an airport, it was something to keep me going. The delay meant that my first flight was taking off after the second one, though, so I arranged a position on a later flight out of La Guardia with the man at the desk, and though it meant I was getting home a few hours later than planned, it was nothing tragic.

What happened a few hours later was when it became tragic - about half an hour before the new time they had given, the man walked up to the desk again and started on what I thought would be the standard apology and reassurance: "Ladies and gentlemen flying on 1384 to La Guardia, sorry for the inconvenience - [the plane is now cleared and we will be boarding shortly] your flight has been cancelled".

I've had flights delayed before, but not experienced a cancelled one - at this point I was almost thinking that I would have to phone Susi again and ask to stay for another last day, because people in front of me in the forming queue at the desk were being handed tickets for 6:30AM flights the next day. But when I got there and handed over my ticket to Boston, he instantly worked out an alternative route that had me going to Charlotte - which I soon found out was in North Carolina, the opposite way from the direction I really wanted to travel - and then on to Boston to arrive at midnight.

I took the flight, which they warned would experience "moderate" bumps (which in my opinion are well up there in "Aeeeeergh the wings are going to fall off" territory), but it was remarkably smooth, and looking out the window while flying around the swirls of the black and white cloud formations was amazing, if I tried to ignore the possibility of huge bolts of electricity shooting out of them towards us. As the light faded, we touched down in North Carolina, a part of America that I had never planned to visit, and it was announced that we were hanging around a bit outside the gates because the storms were coming and some flights were stuck.

At this point I was thinking that I would be staying the night in Charlotte and flying the next day, a feeling that only intensified when I sat down among the perfect chaos of gate C10 - people from a later delayed flight to Providence were trying to change their destination, refugees from earlier flights were camped out at the gate waiting for seats to anywhere at all, and the people at the desk were constantly discussing how far away the plane was compared to the storms, and when our own crew were arriving. I had to go away to a quieter spot and phone Whitney because of not feeling that I could cope, and said that I was going to go off and find a hotel and then sort things out when I was less drained and exhausted, but she convinced me to complete the journey as applause came up from our gate to welcome our crew.

We filed on to the plane, and I got into my seat at the back, feeling at least grateful that it wasn't full as they had said and that a couple of us had an extra half-seat each. After announcing that they were negotiating with air traffic control to get a better route through the air, they moved away from the gate, when they immediately stopped for about twenty minutes, and then said that they were working on a "security issue".

That's not something that you want to hear when you're on a plane. We were told that it was important to stay calm and seated, and though I asked the nearest air-hostess what was happening, she said that she couldn't say any more but that it wasn't anything to worry about. But by this point, I was noticing every rotating light coming from vehicles behind us imagining that they were emergency squads come to dismantle the bomb below us with the scalpel and the antibiotic gel, and I was shaking uncontrollably - not just because the possibility of death had just been introduced to a journey that wasn't really going as planned, but that it was now already a number of hours past when I had hoped to be asleep and that I was still stuck for an unknown amount of time in a place that I knew nothing about.

Finally, another announcement came on to say that the issue had been that someone on the plane was listed as a registered gun owner and that they didn't have the paperwork that told them that it was all right to have him on the plane and that he didn't have his weapon with him, or something like that. I wasn't really listening, I was just hoping that they would announce his seat number at the end so that we could take turns going to beat him up. The air-hostess was very good to me throughout my panic attack, and offered me an orange vodka to calm me down - I replied that I didn't drink, but that now that she mentioned it it was probably a good time to start. Then we got into the air, I put my iPod on, there were a few bumps, I passed out, and finally we touched down in Boston and I met Whitney, Alex and Tenaya, at the end of a planned three-hour journey that took no more than twelve in the end.

This isn't to say that the rest of the trip wasn't great, though... I'm honestly just trying to sort out what to say about it!