Wednesday afternoon at the site, and my supervisor comes around the corner and without preamble says, “you need to leave! As soon as you can!” It took a few seconds to go from what I’d been discussing to the realization that he wasn’t asking for my passcard and laptop so I wasn’t being — ugh — fired, to just plain bafflement.
He follows this up with, “there’s a blizzard coming, and I don’t want you stuck at the airport for five hours if there’s any way around that!” Oi. I had stuff I still needed to do with them on Thursday, and I wasn’t packed, and I wanted to go back to Nordstrom’s Rack and get that coat, and crap, panic sets in — along with a tiny bit of annoyance that “residence in Southwestern State” seems to be equal to “no idea how to drive in snow” despite living in VA during the blizzards of ‘88 and ‘94 and ‘96. Hell, I drove through the Valentine’s Day Whiteout in ‘96 from RI back to VA without problem (a fact of which I am rightfully proud, I say), and then dealt with three years of New England winters. Four or five inches of snow just makes me shrug and go about my business; it takes a foot of snow to even make me pause for a few seconds.
This is all independent of whether they shut the airport down, or delay flights, of course, but I’ve never changed a flight of my own accord, plus the flight was arranged by the company, not me. I called the Divine Miz C who schedules all my trips; she’s out in CA and has no idea of weather on the other coast. I explained, and she says she’ll look and call me back. When she does, she explains one good thing about American is that it’ll let you go standby without paying the re-ticketing fee as long as you get on a flight that’s wide-open. Since the chances were slim to none I’d be able to make the 6pm flight (it was 4pm by then), I could try for the 6am flight out the next morning; there were also 715 and 830 flights as well, but the 6am flight was the widest open, if I could make it.
I think I can do that… so I finish up at work, went back to the hotel room and packed, unpacked, repacked, and could NOT get everything to fit in two bags. I’d really wanted to avoid checking luggage, but I’d taken the smaller suitcases instead of the big one… and after two hours of frustration, gave up. Screw this for a lark, throw all liquids into the to-be-checked bag, put new coat into Nordstrom’s bag, get organized, check room, go get dinner and read in back corner and enjoy glass of wine and be left alone… and get back to hotel around 11pm or a little later.
Oi, so tired, not really that tipsy, just… wiped, and not looking forward to getting up to make it for a 6am flight. Suffice it to say, I did, but then came home braindead for the effort.
Late last night I got an email from C, asking:
I woke up this morning on the west coast to hear the only place where there was flight delays due to weather was….you guessed it…..Philly. And I instantly thought of you and was hoping you made it out on the 7:30 a.m. flight…..what are the chances. Boy, did M call that one or what??
Yeah, I made it home, probably on sheer cussedness by some points, though.
To explain: packed post-dinner, set alarm for 405am, thought twice and set double wakeup calls for backup: 350am, 410am. Naturally with allthe “oi, I have to get up WHEN?” business, I didn’t fall asleep until perhaps 1am.
I wake to some horrendous cover of a saccharine 70s pop song that was pretty horrendous in the first place, roll over… and the clock read 421am. A small moment of silence during which my brain processed this, and from there it took me a total of 9 minutes to dress, grab everything, and get to the front desk; I turned in the ethernet cable, got the folio, and (rather curtly) mentioned that if I’d not set the alarm clock, it would not have been good.
The clerk was astonished at the lack of wake-up calls, asking me whatt ime I’d arranged them. When I told him, there was yet another moment of silence, not unlike when my brain processed the song on the radio, and then very slowly he says, “ma’am… it’s 330am.”
I won’t repeat here what I blurted out, but suffice it to say it pretty much captured the utter frustration of my inner blanket-hugger crying out for that missed hour of sleep. Yes. My hotel room’s clock was set an HOUR ahead, and I’d never bothered to notice because I normally use my cell (except this time, I’d packed it away rather than risk forgetting it on the bedside table). AUGHHH.
Well, then. The kicker?
The reservation was made for Keith ___, of Buford, Georgia. At first I thought my brains were just scrambled from being willingly awake at 330am, but the clerk confirmed it wasn’t my name or home state. We guessed the reservation person must have typed in the surname, then “K,” and chose the first person with a ‘preferred’ card to show up on the screen. On the plus side, I had the extra ten minutes for the clerk to transfer the entire folio from Keith to me. Sigh.
(The irony is that I kept my name post-marrying, and I’ve grown accustomed to certain cards being refused due to the different last name, even if it is my legal spouse’s card. But it’s perfectly alright to put down a reservation for me in a complete stranger’s name, as long as we have the same last name? …although it would’ve been even funnier if it’d been any of my GA-residing cousins. I could’ve snagged the best dessert for years to come at Thanksgiving on that one: “you got POINTS off me, so I get the last slice of pecan!”)
Given all that, everything else naturally went smoothly: I made it to the airport in record time, slid right into a standby seat with no problems, caught the first flight out of Dallas, and was home by noon. Brain-dead, ears completely stuffed, and body in whiplash from 29F to59F temp change, but home — and now VERY glad to hear that it wasn’t for naught!
Eventually I will have an uneventful trip. I’m rather looking forward to it, though I suspect when it happens (if it ever does), I will end up so at cross-purposes with myself out of sheer shock that any uneventfulness will quickly give way to my natural chaotic-in-travel tendencies. Y’know, like, they’ll reboot the plane or something, or I’ll manage to get in line for the plane going to Albuquerque instead of Philadelphia.
