Traveling is a pain to many in business -- especially when adverse conditions, whether stormy weather, airline equipment problems or illness, get in the way.

Last week, my associate, Mitch, and I arrived at the airport on time for our 7 p.m. flight and suffered slightly through a delay. The Southwest Airlines plane had only arrived at our gate 20 minutes before our flight was scheduled to leave, and our outbound flight was sure to be delayed. But the airline did a great job of getting the plane ready for the outbound flight, and we left the gate only about 20 minutes after the published departure time.

But for us, that could have been catastrophic, as we were catching a connecting flight in Chicago's Midway airport for Salt Lake City -- and our connection was tight, with only 35 minutes scheduled on the ground in Chicago. Worse yet, the weather in Chicago kept our pilot from landing; so as we circled, Mitch and I started to create a strategy to stay overnight in Chicago and grab the first flight in the morning to Utah.

As soon as the plane touched down, Mitch pulled out his cell phone, called his daughter in Pittsburgh, and asked her to go online to see the flight status of our connecting flight to Utah. Before the flight ever reached the gate at Midway, we found out that our connecting flight was 35 minutes late and learned the gate number that we'd need to find in a hurry.

Of course, under other circumstances, we would not have needed to call Mitch's daughter at all. We could have used a cell phone or laptop (with cell-phone connection) to browse to Southwest's Web site and look it up ourselves. We weren't that lucky, though. My laptop would have taken 5 to 10 minutes to start-up; and I wasn't getting good results using my cell phone's browser. The Southwest page was giving me errors looking up the flight. It all seemed to be ending well, because we had plenty of time on the ground waiting for our second flight to start boarding.

But there was still much to do with our cell phones, because we were travelling while two important events were happening: my daughter's softball game (with a team that I manage), and the seventh game of the Penguins-Capitals NHL playoff series.

With my daughter's team, it was easy. While still on the ground, I made the call to her cell phone. She told me that we had won, and gave me details. (See, they really don't need me. They just humor me.)

For the Penguins game, the cell phone's browser was just the right solution -- especially because the TV sets in the Chicago airport were all tuned to Cubs baseball. Using all my touch-screen skills, I pulled up ESPN.go.com, where the headline trumpeted that the Pens were leading the game 6 to 2. But there was still plenty of time left, and we were feeling that while the lead was comfortable, it wasn't over yet.

That's where the magic of the Internet really came in. ESPN updated its page continuously, so all I needed to do was keep refreshing the browser page to get updated scores and watch the clock tick town. That first score we saw ended up being the final -- and we knew the outcome before our plane left the gate. Moments later, the flight attendant asked us to turn off all electronics, so our cell phones went back into hibernation. Still, at times like those, I wonder how we ever got along without cell phones and the Internet.