Terminal boredom of the jet-set porter

Caddie's Role: Let me tell you about international travel in the month of August in the year 2005. It's not very sophisticated or civilised. I am beginning to feel like a passenger on the pony express back in the Wild West with a broken wheel, very little water and not much hope.

In terms of flying around the world, the whole month of August is turning out to be worse than a month of Christmas Eves for me.

Let me start with my trip to the US from Germany at the start of the month.

First, an early connection from Hamburg through Frankfurt and a four-hour wait in the plane as it sat on the tarmac with a hydraulic problem. We eventually got off that sick plane and onto a fit replacement. A bad start to an 11-hour flight. But at least we got there in one piece. These things can happen.

Next trip and I found myself in a sweltering Dallas Fort Worth airport in a heatwave aboard my flight to Denver with no air-conditioning and a reputed left-engine problem. We had to wait two hours for a replacement. I was a bit put out but again happy to be getting on to a fit aircraft.

The soldier sitting beside me was at the end of a very long journey back from Iraq for a couple of weeks' leave after a seven-month stint. I ended up feeling very sorry for him - as if seven months in Iraq weren't enough to endure.

I know it sounds like we all travel around in private jets in the States these days. It's true many players and caddies converge at regional airports at the end of tournaments waiting for private craft to whisk them off to the next destination. But even these swanky machines are reliant on the inclement summer weather for uninhibited passage.

After winning the International tournament in Denver, Retief ordered his plane to take us to New Jersey early on Monday after a gruelling 36 holes on Sunday. We took off on time but landed an hour later after circling thunder clouds in the New Jersey area and ended up landing in upstate New York, a 90-minute drive from our original destination. We would have been quicker on a commercial flight.

At least we got there. When we went to leave from Baltusrol there was an hour's delay - who knows why? - but we got to Akron, Ohio, soon enough.

I finally came a cropper the other night in Cleveland Hopkins International airport, Ohio. I was booked to leave at the conservative time of 7.45pm to make my connection through Chicago and back to London. Retief didn't play as well as usual so we were finished quite early.

I could have got a flight at three in the afternoon if I needed to. No problems. I got a late check-out from my hotel and decided, for a change, to watch the denouement of a golf tournament. Normally we are in transit or actually competing on Sunday evenings. Not this time. I was relaxing. I had buckets of time to catch my 7.45 flight.

I got to the airport refreshed and in ample time for my flight. It was delayed. But the check-in attendants were very kind in getting me on the earlier flight to Chicago to ensure I made my transatlantic connection. The only problem was that that ended up being even more delayed than the later flight. Now if you wanted to witness air rage on the ground, gate B3 at Hopkins International would have been a good place to start a couple of Sunday nights ago.

The majority of the irate passengers were normal people just like you and me. While I was waiting, I began to notice a face that looked familiar in a distant type of way. Someone I recognised but didn't know. He looked like a sort of maverick businessman in a dark, well-cut suit and a slim pair of cowboy boots, the ensemble topped off with a natty hairstyle.

I knew I had seen him before. It finally clicked - it was Sean Penn the actor. He was due to go on the same flight to Chicago.

Sean was taking the setbacks calmly. Even more remarkable, nobody was bothering him, unusual in a nation that doesn't mind invading your space in public, especially if you're a big movie star.

Sean got shifted to the later flight, which went earlier, if you know what I mean, and I got shifted to Washington in an effort to make the last flight from there, which of course failed miserably. I was now due to go on the 6.10 flight the following evening. You won't believe it. I didn't either. We had a technical fault. Yep, it eventually left at midnight. Without me, I might add. I was shifted to the earlier 9.30pm London departure, only because they saw the rage brewing in my reddened eyes from all the hanging about and shuffling of the past 24 hours.

Of course my bag didn't make it. So I got back to Dublin for 23 hours and then headed back to the airport to catch my connecting flight to Beijing on Wednesday.

Now you really won't believe this. The extremely helpful and polite dispatcher at Lufthansa informed me there was an "outage" at British air-traffic control. What this meant was a complete mystery apart from the obvious - I was going to miss yet another connection.

More delays, more pleading and horse trading to get on another flight so I could make it to Beijing at least on the day I was supposed to arrive there.

I am kind of expecting to see Tom Hanks in Beijing International, as the fictional character in the movie Terminal, who ends up living in an airport for years.

I wonder what Sean Penn's next role is? Maybe that was a little dummy run for him at Cleveland International.