I Couldn't Make This Up If I Tried

This past weekend was Amy and Todd's wedding. It was beautiful and romantic and fun. This post is not about their wedding. That's coming, but just not now. Now there is a story so ridiculous you'll probably think I'm lying when I tell it, but I promise you that's not the case. As the title suggests, I am simply not creative enough to fabricate a story like this.



My schedule for the weekend was as follows:



Thursday: leave work early, fly to Detroit, have some holiday fun with the fam

Friday: head to Midland in the morning, help Amy get ready for the big day

Saturday: Wedding

Sunday: Back to hang out with the fam for a bit before flying out of Detroit at 5pm



Anyone who tracks the weather can probably see where this is going. And now the tale begins...



Thursday morning I woke up, packed all my last minute belongings and was on my way. Got on the bus, no problem. Got on the blue line, no problem. Got to Government Center, saw the ridiculous amount of people on the platform, thought to myself "this can't be good" and decided to walk the last three or four blocks to work (typically I take the green line a couple stops, particularly when it's cold and I'm carrying luggage). Upon approaching the corner of Tremont and Boylston (where I usually get off the T) I see a collection of fire trucks and ambulances. This is because two trains had crashed into each other. This really has nothing to do with the rest of the story, it just goes to show how my morning was already on shaky ground. I got to work with plenty of time to spare (and even made a CVS stop on the way). I signed on to nwa.com to check in for my flight and see that next to my flight status it says "Cancelled." This does not make me even remotely happy. They had scheduled me for a flight out of Boston at 6am on Friday morning, but I wanted to get there THURSDAY! I had plans! I do not like it when my plans get messed with. There was an option to choose from more flights, so I clicked that and there was one leaving at noon, another leaving at 2:30. Both of those were a go, and they were on schedule. If I picked the noon flight, I would have had to leave work right then and I felt bad about that so I picked the 2:30. This would prove to be a monumental mistake.



I left work, got to the airport, through security, to the gate in record time. The sky was still clear. Right up until I sat down at about 12:45 and it started snowing. Within 20 minutes it was snowing very very hard. The plane coming in from Detroit landed safely and the ticket agents assured us that they were working to get us on the plane and off the ground as quickly as possible. We boarded the plane somewhere in the neighborhood of 2-2:30. The pilot told us we just needed to wait for the wings to be de-iced and then boom, we were off. We then proceeded to wait at the gate for two and a half hours for the de-icing trucks to get to us. They finally did, and we made our way out to the runway. Just as we were excited to be taking off, the wind blew so hard we couldn't see out one side of the plane and they couldn't tell if the wing was still clear enough to take off. The pilot announced that we would go back to the gate and de-ice again. We pulled up to the gate and the pilot once again came over the loud speaker. The tower had decided that it was not practical, given the weather, to try and take off again. The flight was cancelled. We had now been on board for over 3 hours. The pilot assured us that a ticket agent would be outside when we got off the plane to help us with booking a new flight.



This was not the case.



Finally, when I got to baggage claim and hadn't seen a single Northwest employee, I went into the baggage claim office to inquire about this aforementioned helpful ticket agent. The woman in there looked at me like I was insane and said, "no, you just call a number and book yourself a new flight." I resisted the urge to strangle her and asked politely for the number. She told me to find myself a piece of paper and something to write with (so helpful) and told me the number. I went outside the ticket office, called the number and was promptly told, "Oh, there is no way to get you out of Boston tomorrow. Everything is totally booked." I'm not ashamed to tell you that at this point I had a complete and total meltdown. I was standing in the middle of baggage claim, on the phone with this woman, crying so hard I could barely talk and reaching a level bordering on hysterical when I said to her, "My friend is getting married in Michigan on SATURDAY. I am in the wedding. I HAVE to be there. YOU HAVE TO GET ME THERE." Meanwhile, thoughts of missing Amy's wedding and ruining her day by being one bridesmaid short are spinning through my head along with flashbacks of the nightmare I'd had a few weeks before in which I was physically prevented from making it to the wedding. This did not help the crying. I started pleading with the woman on the phone, "Can't you get me into Cleveland or Chicago or somewhere CLOSE? If you can get me close I can get the rest of the way there." The woman explained that everything in the Great Lakes area goes through Detroit. The only way she could get me to that wedding was if I could fly out of a different airport. There was nothing in Providence. Nothing in Manchester. Finally, she found me a 12:30pm flight out of Hartford, CT on Friday. I do not have a car, which she was pretty unsympathetic about. She suggested I just call a friend and get them to drive me on a work day. She did not understand why this was not a reasonable choice. However, failure was simply not an option at this point. I told her to book the flight and I would figure out some way to get there.



I got my bags and boarded the first rental car shuttle bus that pulled up to the terminal. I rode this Enterprise bus with a very nice little family from Australia who had an adorable baby and kept giving me concerned looks because I was the crazy American girl who couldn't stop crying. We got to Enterprise and I asked if they had anything available even though I didn't have a reservation. They said they did. I asked if it was ok for me to rent the car in Boston and leave it in Hartford. The guy said I could do it, but they don't really do one-way rentals so there would be a $200 drop fee in addition to the rental charge. I had a mini heart attack thinking about how much this would cost me, but I told him I didn't really have a choice. This extremely sympathetic and friendly man told me that National car rental does do one-way rentals, so I should call them and see if they have anything available before I committed to this Enterprise thing. He gave me the number, and sure enough they had something for me. The woman said the rate would be $160. I said, "That's fine. Hold it for me, I'll be right there!" I got back on the Enterprise shuttle bus, headed back to the airport. And proceeded to get stuck in the snow on Route 1. I'm happy to tell you that we weren't stuck for more than a few minutes before the driver managed to get us unstuck. I got back to the airport, hopped on a National shuttle bus, and made it over there. I walked up to the counter, found the woman I had spoken to on the phone, and....



...paid $280 for a rental car that I would have for less than 24 hours. To be perfectly honest with you, at that point money was no object. They could have charged me $700 for that car and I would have taken it. Nothing was stopping me from getting to this wedding. I went out to the parking lot, selected a Pontiac G6 from the choices available (because it had the least amount of snow on it). I got in the car, got it started up, a little man from National helped me clear it off, and I couldn't get it out of the parking space. My little friend got in and rocked the car back and forth until he was able to get it out, I jumped in and was on my way.



I should tell you that at this point I had been almost continually on the phone with my mom and with Amy, keeping them updated minute by minute on my progress with getting to Michigan. I was upset, I was crying, I know for a fact it was impossible to understand at least half of what I was saying. I kept thinking about how I was ruining Amy's wedding and I hated the snow. Once I got my rental car, however, I started to calm down. I thought to myself, if nothing else, I am now in control of my own destiny. I have this car, I can get where I need to go.



Or so I thought.



I drove to Winthrop and as I was making my way into town, I noticed a flashing blue light. A very bright flashing blue light. A blue light that you can't miss. A blue light signaling that there was a parking ban on the streets because of the snow. Which meant I'd have to find a parking space in a lot somewhere. However, because basically all of Boston had shut down several hours previously and I'd spent 7 hours trying to get on a flight, get in the air, get a rental car, etc. there were no spaces to be had. Beyond that, I couldn't even get on my street if I wanted to. The plows hadn't made it that far yet. At this point I tried to call Sacha to see if I could park by his house and sleep on his floor. However, Sacha is a swim coach who had practice and was unable to take my call. I tried to call Toni who was supposed to be in town to ask her the same question. However, Toni was currently in her car experiencing what it's like when a snowstorm makes a 6 hour drive a 12 hour drive so she was clearly unavailable. I tried to call Suneil, who did not pick up his phone (not unusual). I am once again getting desperate and crazy, and to add to my long list of issues, the wipers on the rental car kept getting covered in ice so that I couldn't see out the windshield. I pulled into a Dunkin' Donuts parking lot (thankfully cleared, not full of cars, but also not an option to leave the car). I cleaned the wipers, checked my cell phone and saw that my mom had called. I hadn't spoken to her since about an hour before when I said I was actually getting a rental car and I'd call her when I was safely back home. I explained to her the situation that I was now in, and my thoughts on it which boiled down to this, "I just want to go home and have a really big drink! And I want my mom!!!" As you can see, I revert further and further back into childhood as this story goes on.



I decided at that point that I would just drive to the Target that's about 5 minutes away from my house because at least I could sit there for awhile until I figured something out. I got to Target and at this point my cell phone pretty much died. That ended up not quite being the crisis situation it could have been because I have two cell phones. One for work, one for personal use. I switched to my work phone while I continued to cry to Amy at this point. But then, using this phone I had a bright idea. I would swallow what very little pride I had left and call my boss. I got her on the phone and gave her my whole sob story and finished with something incredibly dramatic along the lines of, "And now I have nowhere to go!" She told me to calm down, to go into Target and wander around or get something to eat and she'd come to get me, I could follow her to her house, put my car in her driveway and sleep there that night. I thanked her profusely, apologized for being so pathetic that I had to call her, and went into Target. Where I called Amy back and proceeded to cry in Target. I mean, what's the use of dignity, anyway? :) I apologized for stressing her out two days before her wedding, but Amy was suprisingly and admirably calm through all this. She said she was totally fine, I wasn't stressing her out, she just felt bad for me. Honestly, one of us freaking out was probably enough.



Fairly soon my kindhearted boss came to retrieve me and I followed her to her house. By this time (approximately 9pm) the snow had stopped and the roads were fairly clear. We made it to her house without incident, she sent me upstairs to take a shower and put my pajamas on while she did a little shoveling of snow, she fed me dinner, gave me some wine and talked to me about things other than air travel which helped me to calm down. I didn't sleep much (big surprise there) and then in the morning she made me pancakes and eggs, let me borrow her GPS unit and got me on my way. I think it's safe to say I have one of the nicest and most understanding bosses ever.



I was off on my way to Hartford at this point, shortly before 7am on Friday. It took a little over two and a half hours to get there, which wasn't too bad considering we'd gotten 10 inches of snow in 5 hours the day before and I was driving during the morning commute. I dropped the rental car off in sunny Hartford, caught the shuttle to the terminal and got myself up to the ticket counter. I'm guessing it was because of the special circumstances and the booking of my ticket over the phone, but I was unable to do the e-check in. I got the attention of a ticket agent, gave her my confirmation number and ID and she set about looking for me in the system to print my boarding pass. It took a good 15 minutes for her to find me. 15 minutes in which I had what felt like a minor heart attack thinking I would not get on yet another flight to Michigan. Luckily (can you really say 'luckily' at this point?) they found me and I was good to go. It was pretty astonishing how many people flying out of Hartford were completely unfamiliar with the 3oz containers in a plastic bag rule. It took forever to get through security. Of course, I showed up two and a half hours early for my flight, so I wasn't that concerned about it. When the TSA guy asked me if I had any liquids in my bag and I said no, he breathed a sigh of relief and said, "oh thank God." I'm pretty sure he wasn't having the greatest day either.



I got on the plane, got into Detroit, got my bags, got to my parents' house, got ready, packed up the car and managed to make it to Saginaw just in time for the rehearsal dinner at 7. At which time I had a big drink and finally started to relax. Looking back I still can't believe all the things that went wrong and almost prevented me from making it there. Wow. I can't believe I didn't pick the noon flight on Thursday, I could kick myself.



There was a short time when I thought I wouldn't be able to get back to Boston on Sunday due to the snow situation in Michigan and the ice storm that was supposed to be hitting the East Coast. In the end we took off an hour late, got slowed down twice in the air, landed an hour and a half later than scheduled in Boston, had to wait 20 minutes to get off the plane because the jetway broke, and the bags took a really REALLY long time coming off the carousel. In other words, it was practically a perfect flight in comparison.



And now I am back, still totally sleep deprived, and in desperate need of a way to stop having flashbacks from Thursday that cause massive anxiety, but all in all I'm just happy to be here.



If you can top that story, please don't tell me. I don't need anything beyond this experience to make me nervous when flying in the future. I'm nervous enough in general. :)