'The server broke and so did my back on the flight to fix it'

Epic tale of idiot sysadmin and the trek to clean up the mess left behind

Stormy times ahead

“On the first leg of my flight the little airplane flew into a bad storm,” he tells us.

“Somewhere over the mountains we hit a hole in the air, lost lift, and the plane lost a couple thousand feet.

"With a massive BOOM the wings suddenly caught lift again. Men swore, women screamed, babies cried, and I sat there thinking how amazing it was that we had actually gone weightless for a few seconds and feeling grateful that for once I was sitting straight and had seemingly absorbed the impact well.”

That “seemingly” is an important word, because JT soon realised “I had wrenched my back when the plane had caught lift again and now I was feeling pain down my legs.

"My next flight was delayed two hours due to the storm, a sick passenger on the previous flight of our connecting plane (she vomited in the aisle just as the plane came to a stop at the gate after their own rough flight), and an ominous announcement that the ground crew had decided to do a 'cosmetic replacement of a bearing on the nose landing gear'.

"The guy in the seat next to me and I both looked up, looked at each other and realised we probably shouldn't ask too many questions."

During the next flight, JT says he was “in agony feeling every bump and wiggle of the aircraft. All plans for sleeping a bit on the plane were gone. All I could think was, 'Holy hell, what have I done to myself?' In the airport I was violently ill in the restroom.”