mschoen202 As I type this it is 9:31pm, my computer has 12% battery and I am on a plane flying to Chicago, and I can’t for the life of me find the power cord plug. Maybe there isn’t one, maybe it’s just dark because it’s 9:31pm, but the important thing to note is that I’m panic typing because as we speak it just went down to 11%.
*Record scratch* You’re probably wondering how I ended up in this situation.
Remy
I’m kidding, you probably couldn’t care less, but lucky for you, I’m going to tell you anyways, because I forgot to download a book on my Kindle and I already took a nap.
The Exposition
As is tradition, this story starts way earlier than necessary because I believe context is important. You know, exposition, setting the stage for the real story so when the you finish reading you’re like “wow, that was a really good, well-developed story.”
Panic typing. Sorry.
later
I am exactly two weeks away from leaving to live in Ireland for a year. Last night Wayfish and I had a packing party which included margaritas, a lot of reflecting on the past year, and minimal actual packing. In fact the only packing I did was for this Chicago trip, which considering I was leaving straight from work the following day (today) was the literal bare minimum. The point here is that I went to bed around 11, which is way too late when you know that 4:20am alarm is coming in the all-to-near future, resulting in about 5 hours and 20 minutes of total sleep.
10%…
The day begins at 4:20am, as it always does. I go to work as I always do. As riveting as it is, I will spare you the details of me working on a spreadsheet for 8 hours. The most exciting part of my day was a co-worker saying, “Oh I think it’s supposed to rain today,” and me replying “Oh, cool.” (If you didn’t pick up on it, that was foreshadowing). Around 2pm, I leave to make the 45-minute trek back to my apartment to grab my stuff and call an Uber to the airport for a 4:45pm flight to Chicago for my cousin’s wedding.
9%
best doggone dog in the west
I kid you not, as I pick up my phone to call the Uber I get a National Weather Service alert on my phone for a dangerous, potentially life-threatening dust storm coming to the Phoenix area. I admit this is probably on me, but I give no thought to the implications of this for my plans other than hopefully my Uber driver knows how to drive through dust.
.
.
.
“Does it smell like weed to you in here?”
I’m not going to lie and say those were particularly comforting words to hear from my Uber driver as I place my life in his hands in the midst of an impending life-threatening dust cloud of doom. “I swear, the guy I dropped off before you must’ve just come from the dispensary because he had a huge package of weed and now it smells in here.”
Look, I am as trusting as it gets and even I was like hmm, I might very quickly regret this decision. Alas, I had a plane to catch, a wedding to attend, and a dust storm to outrun, so I placed my trust in weed guy and hoped for the best.
8%
As we’re driving out of the apartment complex our surroundings darken, and it’s the first time I’m like, huh, this dust storm could potentially be problematic. Even still, my only goal was to get to the airport. If I can just make it to the airport, I’m golden. I should also mention weed guy’s car was flashing LOW FUEL on the dashboard. Things were going well.
7%. I went back to read through what I had written so far, so that ate up some time.
Luckily for me, the dust gods were on my side and the airport was in the opposite direction of the dust storm. We were literally racing the dust to get there before things went dark. I have to give it to weed guy, when the world called on him to deliver (me to the airport), he rose to the challenge. We arrive, fully intact, with time to spare, and I think “nothing is going to bring me down now.”
I realize now this could be a slightly problematic pattern of mine – believing everything is going to go well and then things immediately not going well. Alas, I digress.
I get through security and get to my gate and finally have the presence of mind to look out the window. As soon as I do, I know. There is absolutely no way this is going to end in my favor. It was just brownish-gray nothing outside. The storm had caught up to us. I look at my weather alerts and it’s just blaring red – dust storm, rain storm, thunderstorm, anything you can think of ending in –storm was probably on this list.
Like I said, I had given zero thought as to how the storm might affect my flight, my one and only goal was making it to the airport on time. Now it was starting to settle in that this could cause some issues. Despite my internal anxiety about the present situation, though, the Southwest employees were carrying on as if there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. We board like normal, I find my precious window seat, turn on some Noah Kahan (shocker), and settle down for a long winter’s nap – and by that I mean a nap in the middle of summer in Arizona.
5%. I just got so into my story I completely flew by 6%.
We’re sitting for a while on the tarmac, but in my contented napping state, I hardly noticed. Before you know it, 25 minutes had passed and the flight attendant gets on the loud speaker and says “I hate to do this to you all, but it turns out we don’t have pilots for this flight.”
Oh, good.
“The pilots were on a different flight that was supposed to land here, but due to the weather got diverted to San Diego, so now we don’t have any pilots to fly this plane. Please get your luggage and leave the plane until we figure out what is going on.”
Now, this is probably par for the course considering all the buildup I gave to this. The worst part, though, was not that my 18-hour day was about to become infinitely longer. The worst part is that my poor parents were already on their flight, out of San Diego (ironically enough), and were planning on meeting me at the airport in Chicago at 10:00pm when both our flights were supposed to
… my computer died.
Hi, it’s me again, a few days later and believe it or not, 100% charge! Where were we?
Ah yes, my parents and I were supposed to arrive at the same time at the Midway airport. Clearly that did not happen, not by a long shot. So we continue the story.
We got off the plane and waited with bated breath by the gate for what felt like an eternity to see what our Chicago-bound fate would be. Realistically, it was probably about 20 minutes. At this point I was convinced that the flight would get cancelled and considering all other flights were $700 one-way, that I would not be attending my poor cousin’s wedding. Around 6pm (remember the flight was supposed to leave at 4:45) we get some, dare I say, good news: they found new pilots (woo!) who will be here between 6:30 and 6:45 (slightly less woo).
I won’t go in to detail about my rather boring time waiting in the airport for the pilots to show up, but I will say I was so desperate for something to do that I penned a poem called “Ode to Plane Travel,” that is worth a read if you haven’t done so already.
The Resolution
At 6:45 we begin the boarding process again, and I once again settle in for my long-awaited winter’s nap. I wake up a couple hours later which brings us to the time I began writing this recount, once again with literally nothing to fill my time. We land around 12:45 am, and arrive at our hotel around 2am after my parents spent hours sitting in a dark car in a sketchy parking lot outside of Midway airport.
There is absolutely no moral of this story, it was rather just a series of unfortunate events that got recorded simply because I didn’t download a book to my Kindle. Thank you for going on this dust storm journey with me.
The end.
P.S. I think it should be documented that returning from this wedding my entire family got Covid, I missed my last week of work in Arizona, and I had to move out of my fourth floor apartment in 120 degree heat and, well, Covid. The wedding though… A+. Worth every last second in quarantine.
