the trip to north carolina part iii: the final showdown with chicago

in case you've completely forgotten about the trip to north carolina i started telling you about, you can read my past posts here and here.

and now... the finale of our saga.

when my sister and her husband dropped me off at the airport, there was some confusion with my ticket. for some reason it was showing up that i'd already checked in, which i obviously hadn't yet, since i was standing there. they got it sorted out eventually and i said my goodbyes and headed to my gate. it wasn't long before the plane took off and i was on my way back to (dun dun DUUUUUUUNNN) chicago.

when i left north carolina, i was feeling a little something like this.

 

it's always hard to part with family, especially when you're not sure when you can see them again. if i'd have known what was in store for my trip home, i probably would have been even more weepy for even more reasons, but as it was i was mainly concerned with leaving my sister behind. 

the plane ride was fairly uneventful in the beginning. however, as we got closer to our destination i noticed flashes outside. lightning. it turns out that we were flying over a tornado somewhere in the midwest. kind of scary, but it all turned out alright and we landed safely in chicago. i made my way to the gate of my connecting flight in plenty of time. lots of time, it turned out, because the flight was delayed.

sigh.

i stayed at the gate and busied myself with reading until our flight was supposed to be taking off. then a voice came on over the intercom saying that there was a maintenance problem that they were trying to sort out.

then, a little while later, the voice came on again. the flight was cancelled. it had been struck by lightning. and once again, chicago was making an attempt to claim my soul. i was tired. i didn't want to spend another hundred years in chicago. but i made my way over to the customer service desk and got in line with all the other disgruntled people trying to make their way home. after waiting in line for an hour and a half, i got to the front and plead my case.

i don't know what kind of madness was going on, but there were no open flights from chicago to salt lake for two days. two days. all of the flights during those two days had standby lists of twenty people. at that point, i'd gone from weepy to something like this.

the customer service lady was very nice, though, and was genuinely trying her best to find a way to get me home. she offered to put me on a flight from chicago to washington dc and then from dc to salt lake city, but my spidey senses told me that that was a very bad idea. i just knew something would happen and i'd get stuck in dc, which was even further away from home than chicago was. so i asked her to send me to las vegas instead, which was closer to home. i figured i could just rent a car there if i needed to and drive home.

so i waited a few more hours for the flight to las vegas. i was on standby and barely squeaked in-- the very last person on the plane. they showed the social network, but i didn't watch it. or rather... i didn't hear it. i did watch some of what was going on on the screen. i still haven't actually ever seen it, because it still reminds me of the whole miserable plane situation. someday, maybe.

when i landed in vegas, i was a bit of an emotional wreck. i'd been traveling for hours upon hours and i was tired and i just wanted to be home. i called my dad and told him that i figured i could rent a car and drive home. he told me that there had been a major snowstorm and it probably wasn't a good idea to be driving and that he wanted me to get a ticket to fly from vegas to salt lake. i didn't want to get on another plane. i didn't want someone to be in charge of my getting home again. i wanted to be master of my own destiny. but he was probably right-- i was tired, it had been snowing, i shouldn't drive the eight hours it would take to get home.

so i sat at a slot machine called Kenny Rogers's The Gambler. and i looked like this.

i did get a ticket to salt lake. i had to leave security and go to the check-in counter at the front of the airport to buy a ticket on another airline. i felt very dramatic and i'm sure the situation must have seemed a little odd to the woman behind the counter. it was new year's eve and i wanted a one-way ticket from wild las vegas to the more conservative soils of salt lake city. no bags to check. just one slightly puffy-eyed, bedraggled passenger.

when i finally landed in salt lake and was met by my dad at the airport, i was a bit of a mess. i get weepy when i'm tired and it had just been an altogether bad day. i didn't cry, though, until i found out that my bag was lost. neither airline knew where it was and each airline said that the other was responsible for it. my dad, in his infinite kindness, handled the situation and made the arrangements to find the bag and get it back to me. in fact, when the airline hadn't delivered it the next day, he was the one who drove up to salt lake to retrieve it for me. my hero.

so the moral of the story is: don't fly through chicago o'hare. just don't do it. it will try to eat your soul and if it doesn't get it the first time, it will try again. just say no, friends. just say no.