On the Brink

I’m leaving tomorrow for a little trip – requiring me to fly through Chicago. Cause for major trepidation!

The last time I had to fly through Chicago I got stuck there because of weather. It was a summer storm and Chicago was acting like there had never been bad weather there and they didn’t know what to do. There were long lines to the ticket counters as passengers tried to rebook alternative flights. As the evening wore on the United Airlines employees working those counters went off to dinner, then to breaks, then finally it was quitting time, and the lines had barely diminished at all. Before we knew it the last employee had turned off the lights and slipped away and they were announcing the closing of the airport for the night – and there were literally 10,000 of us still there, standing in line!

And thus began the quest for an over-priced Chicago hotel room. The airport offered reservation service, gave us the name of the hotel and the confirmation number and sent us off to stand in the taxi line for another hour or so. The hotel was many miles away from the airport (causing the taxi drive alone to break the budget) and when we arrived, at 2 am, there was no room available, no reservation recorded, no offer of an alternative. There were no rental cars available to just ‘get out of town’ and on our way, no promise of a flight out the next day because they were already overbooked. We couldn't retrieve our baggage and were stuck in our travel clothes for the duration.

We arrived at our destination a day late and hours after the occasion for which we were traveling was over. On the return trip, another storm caused us to miss our connecting flight in Chicago again, the last one of the day, and we had to do it all over.

So if anyone has any great and powerful ‘weather zen’ I’d appreciate it if you’d cast it out there. I swore I’d never do it again, but I’m flying through Chicago!

I’ll really feel like a fool if it happens again.