A strange week, this one. My mission was a visit to a customer I've been working with in Peoria, IL. It all started at 5 AM ET on Monday morning with a trip to the airport. Since it had been raining and Goldie (my 1999 Subaru Legacy with no antenna and a nice new vanilla tree) has developed a slight leak in the sun roof right over the driver seat, my butt was a little damp on arrival at the airport. Not a great start, but if that is the worst that happens, I'm in good shape. It wasn't.
The TSA line at ROA was a bit worse than usual for a Monday morning and people were testy. They had to bring out the cops to kick some people who had been cutting in to the back. Not a pleasant way to start the week.
The flight to Atlanta was uneventful and I slept the whole way (after staying up a bit too late the night before to watch the Super Bowl and clean up afterwards). At Atlanta, the real fun began. My flight to Peoria was delayed due to fog at the airport there and so we waited around for 30 minutes or so before they started boarding the plane. A 30 minute delay out of Atlanta on a Monday is like hitting the jackpot, so I was feeling pretty good. They get us on the plane and everyone is settling in for the flight. Just before they close the door, the pilot comes on to say that conditions in Peoria haven't improved so they are going to take us off the plane and update the status in an hour.
A hour goes by and we reboard the plane. This time we push back and get in the air in a remarkably short time considering it is Atlanta on a Monday morning. So, I put on the headphones, neck pillow and eye shade and go to sleep anticipating a good hour nap. About 40 minutes in, I hear the captain come on the intercom. Since this is an ususual time in a flight to be annoucing anything, I pull the headphones off and see what he has to say: we can't land in Peoria so we are turning around to go back to Atlanta. At this point, I'm imagining some kind of monster fog that has actually eaten the city. With that in mind (and after my fog landing experience a few weeks back), I'm pretty glad we are turning around. I go back to sleep convinced that I'm not going to be making it to Peoria at all.
When we get back to Atlanta, I call Delta (only suckers wait in the customer service line at the airport) and try to see what my options are. If I return home, they can't refund all of my ticket since I used part of it (this doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but arguing with the CSR isn't worth it - if I had been stuck in Roanoke, they would have probably refunded me. If you don't get me 100% to the place I want to go, why can't you give me 100% of my money back?) She suggests Chicago, a three hour drive from Peoria. One look at the delays and cancellations on the board in Atlanta shows that this is probably not a good move. However, St. Louis, which also about a three hour drive away from Peoria looks clear and there is a flight boarding right now that she can get me on. Of course, it is on the A concourse and I'm in E, so I have to hustle down there to be the very last person on board.
I get seat 31A on the MD88. That seat might be considered a good option for interrogating Al Qaeda suspects if waterboarding is determined to be illegal. It is slightly narrower than the typical seat and is against the rear bulkhead so you have all the advantages of being both compressed (you can't recline and are wedged against the window) and subjected to extreme levels of engine noise. A couple of back to back cross country round trips in 31A with a 350 pounder adjacent and a 5 year old fully reclining his seat and bouncing in front and you would crack the hardest terrorist.
What I can't complain about is the weather in St. Louis - it is 75 degrees and sunny. I had to take off my coat when I was outside to stop sweating as I waited for the the rental car shuttle. I got a Mazda 3 from Florida that felt like someone had been spinning cotton candy in it. Every surface I touched was sticky. Since it was now almost 4 PM and I wanted to drive as much as I could before nightfall, I decided to not try my luck getting a different vehicle and donned my surgical gloves and haz-mat suit that I carry in my travel bag for just such an occasion. I'm trying to block out any consideration of what exactly was making the car sticky - I just don't want to know.
The first half of the drive up to Peoria was your typical experience driving in the Midwest - straining every last neuron in your brain to stay awake from the intense boredom of driving straight at the same speed for hours. The second half of the drive was out of a Stephen King novel.
A little south of Springfield, IL, I noticed some cloudiness ahead. No big deal until I got close and saw it was a bank of solid fog - I really thought the little car might bounce right off of it. Once inside, you could see maybe 50 yards ahead of the car in the waining daylight. When the sun went down, you could see maybe 30 yards and I had this strange sensation of going downhill. It is hard to say why, but it really felt like you were travelling downhill through a tunnel of fog. This went on for an hour or so until it got worse.
I noticed some faint flashing off to the left and thought it must be a radio tower or something. Except it kept going and got much brighter. Lightining. Then the rain and hail came. So, now I can see pretty much nothing in the combination of dense fog, lighting, hail and rain. My cell phone battery has died, so if I vanish off the road into a ditch, they will discover me a week later. I have no real idea where I'm going and I'm still sticking to the seat. I thought the earth was going to open up and swallow me at this point.
Somehow, I make it to Peoria without a firey wreck and start recognizing some street names. I know University street so I take that exit and start looking for landmarks. I get lucky and remember the location of a McDonald's and a Starbucks (I love America!) and find the hotel after only three passes and make it to my room by 8 PM CT.
The trouble on the return trip pales in comparison, so I'm not even going to mention it. I really hope I've worked out all of my bad travel karma for the year.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
glad you are safe home in the bubble!
me too!
Good times! Reminds me of a trip I tried to make to Newburgh, NY one time.
Flight from ROA to Dulles was fine until we turned east and suddenly Dulles was too foggy to land.
They took us to BWI, which has no flights to Newburgh, NY. So, eventually, I flew from BWI to Dulles and back to ROA because I also missed the last Dulles flight to NY.
I spent that whole day on planes and in airports. But guess what, I did get 100% of my money back from United. Of course this was 10 years ago. Rules have changed.
Post a Comment