Getting to Maine wasn’t the issue, it was getting out of Chicago.
Day 1
A week and a half ago on Wednesday I was packed and ready for my 2.5 hour flight to Bangor. There had been a brief storm that morning, but it had passed quickly and the skies had mostly cleared, yet they were still delaying the flight by two hours. No problem – I ate some lunch re-evaluated my travel outfit, decided not to wear my walking boot (doc gave me the release) and headed out again towards the airport a couple hours later. O’Hare was a zoo. It’s always a zoo, but it seemed a bit more chaotic. It seemed like there were people everywhere. Sitting in the halls outside their gates. Crowding around the gate agents and the screens announcing departure times. I found a place to sit and charge my phone and set about people watching. About 20 minutes in I got a text that it had been delayed another hour. No worries. As long as I got to Maine. 30 minutes after that – about an hour before my flight was scheduled to take off – it was cancelled. There was no storm outside. My sister reported beautiful weather in Maine – but “weather” was the reason. I quickly tracked down an agent at another gate and he was kind enough to help me get on the same flight the next day. “My sister’s wedding, “ I pleaded. “A broken foot” I begged. It worked. This was good – my friends were on this flight. United refused to return my luggage to me but assured me it would be checked on the next direct flight (which was the one I’d been booked on). So I went home and went to bed with a sore aching foot, but confidence I’d get to Maine the next day.
Day 2/3
Fog. A thick, murky fog had quietly settled in over night. It burned off quickly, but left me with an unsettled feeling that morning. Our flight was scheduled to leave at around 1pm. By 9am they had cancelled the flight a second time. No delays – straight to cancellation. There is only one direct flight a day from Chicago to Bangor on this airline– so we could try again the next day or we could figure out an alternate route. My friends in Denver and I decided to try to get as far as Boston as soon as possible and then make the 5 hour drive up to Brooklin, Maine – none of us confident that the direct flight would ever get to Bangor. My flight was scheduled to take off at 7:50pm out of Chicago and I’d get to Boston by 11pm. This time I wore my walking boot. My flight was again delayed, but we boarded! Hallelujah!!
And then we sat on the runway. For 20 minutes.
For 30 minutes.
For an hour.
Our pilot would periodically get on the intercom, only barely hiding his own frustration as he updated us on our status. He’d say things like, “They can tell me WHY in an airport as LARGE as CHICAGO that they can’t give me MORE information on WHY they would have us wait her so long WHEN JUST A FEW MINUTES AGO they said we were cleared.” But eventually we took off. And the flight was an easy one because, seriously, the weather wasn’t bad.
My seatmate, noticing my walking boot, acted as my own personal body guard when we got to Boston. He wouldn’t let anyone off the plane until I got off, looking over his shoulder and announcing, “She’s got a boot!” and “This girl’s wobbling! Give her space!” Then when I mentioned how slow I felt walking up the jetway he said, “No one’s getting past me, hon.”
:: Boston airport all to ourselves
Unsurprisingly, my luggage did not make the trip with me to Boston. They had promised me only that it would be put on the next direct flight to Bangor. While they knew I’d changed my flight to Boston, no one made me any promises. And I guess good for them that they didn’t.
I’d booked a hotel in Portsmouth, NH and not Boston for 2 reasons: #1 – hotels in Boston=$300; hotels in Portsmouth= $80. #2 – it shaved an hour off my drive the next day. It is an amazing feat of trickery that I made it safely to that hotel. It was 2:30am in a city I didn’t know, without a map. I completely trusted that the Garmin the car rental place gave me would deliver me to the hotel. It was already 25 mintues in to my drive before I realized that GPS hadn’t moved. I quickly pulled up the map on my phone and was able to drive another 30 minutes before my phone died. I was somewhere on the road to Portsmouth. A magical rest stop with power outlets suddenly appeared. As I drove in I thought, “A girl lost on the highway in the middle of the night who stops at a rest stop to charge her phone…is totally a Dateline Mystery special” Abduction was a possibility, but I had to get to this goshdangit hotel and to do so I had to charge my phone. I survived!
10 minutes later I found my hotel.
barely never did I fall asleep. but I think I did because at some point I woke up.
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I’ll continue with the wedding tomorrow!
