Well folks, it’s time for another winter break for Gigantor the Unfortunate. It’s also time for another unfortunate travel story. Why world? Why? Liz has called me a bad travel omen.
It all started with a snowstorm in the Washington DC area. What’s that you say? ‘That’s preposterous? DC hasn’t had a good snow storm in years!’ Well you’re wrong. Snow returned to DC…on the day I needed to fly home.
What’s that sound? That vengeful, vengeful sound. That would be irony. I couldn’t fly home on Saturday, not because it was snowing or foggy (stupid fog) in Iowa. I couldn’t come home because DC was getting two feet of snow.
I’m going to try to make this story as brief and winy-less as possible. Ha, good luck! By some miracle on Saturday morning my flight hadn’t been cancelled yet. I knew that it would be soon, but I took the shuttle to Des Moines Airport anyway. Don’t ask me what I was thinking. When I got to the airport my flight from O’Hare still wasn’t cancelled for some ridiculous reason. But because I erred on the side of caution and rebooked my flight for the next day. The person who helped at the counter went into a little song and dance about how I should have left yesterday to avoid the snow. Ya think?
My friend Jessica, from Grinnell, picked me up from the Des Moines airport b/c she had an appointment with a genius…for her Mac…in the DM area anyway. We got lost on our way to Jordan Creek Mall, partly because of my awful direction asking. While her computer got examined I looked for Christmas presents and ended up only buying a belt and ear muffs…for myself. I was really glad to spend more time with Jessica. She’s really cool and I only loosely got to know her during the semester. Plus she told me the dirt from the group’s early history.
At the DM airport, my mom had contacted Mama Sholten (the bro’s GF’s mom) to see if I could stay with their family until Sunday. Jessica and I got semi-lost on our way there too, but we made it and I spent the rest of the day with the Sholten parents. They were so nice and accommodating, especially to someone they had only vaguely heard about previously through the bro. I mos def got to work on my small talk skills (they ain’t that great yet). At one point, I watched TV with them for a little bit and I got to see a news story about people who were stranded because they couldn’t fly into DC. Ha!
Earlier that morning the shuttle had waited for a train to pass in Grinnell. As I frosted cookies with the parents that night in Des Moines I watched a train go by outside of their condo. Sometimes it’s unexpected where life will take you.
The next day all my flights were on time and I got home in a matter of hours. Just kidding. My flight from Des Moines was delayed by 10 minutes. It was terrible! She said sarcastically. I got to O’Hare on time and leisurely walked to my gate. Waiting for my flight, I ran into Harry, a classmate from HB who was on the same flight. I boarded and settled into my plane seat, so happy that everything was on time and I would be home soon. I think you see where this is going. Then, on the loud speaker, the pilot said “There’s a big backlog of flights into Reagan trying to find a gate, so we have two choices. We can go to the airport and sit in the plane for four hours, or stay in O’Hare for four hours. I’ve chosen the latter.” Just to clarify: my flight got pushed from 6pm to 10pm. Harry and I went to a bar recommended to him by a friend, then ate dinner and went to board our plane. As we sat in the waiting area I worked on this blog and heard a women complaining on her phone that her flight had been pushed to 11pm. I looked at the screen and what do you know? She was talking about my flight.
Then a crazy old man came and bombarded me with questions about my computer. Then he saw a poster of Tiger Woods and said he couldn’t be called Tiger anymore. He would have to be called Cheetah. Like a cheater. Get it? Yes crazy old man, I got it.
Then my flight was pushed to 11:58pm. Then it was pushed to 12:30am. Meanwhile crazy old man harassed/terrorized various people in the waiting area. Then it got interesting. Another flight into Las Vegas was also having trouble…and had been having trouble all day. Let’s just say that the natives were getting restless. The airline people started making angry announcements telling people to back the frak off. I wasn’t entirely certain a fight wouldn’t break out. I hate angry travelers. Cause getting angry with people trying to do their jobs really helps make things go faster. My favorite part of the night was watching a show about sharks because one of the people in the show was…Anderson Cooper. Naturally he would be swimming with sharks. Wait till the girls at Grinnell hear about this. Oh how they’ll swoon.
I boarded my flight at 12:15am with cautious optimism and…thank god it took off. The baggage claim at Reagan was crazy. Apparently my luggage got there before I did. There were just hundreds of bags in lines. Harry and I shared a cab to Arlington. A sketchy dude tried to take us to Arlington for 40$...yeah he was not a taxi.
As I was driven home I looked at the snow that had put a wrench in my travel plans. It looked a lot the snow in Grinnell. Except the snow in Arlington is fresher and in Iowa they actually know how to plow their roads.
I fell asleep in my bed at 4:30am. Maybe I should rename
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