getting stuck

It always happens to other people, a cousin’s best friend, an uncle, a coworker or maybe a professor. It’s not a cancer diagnosis, or a car accident, or any thing else as doom and gloom or tragic. This is on a different level of horror completely.

I’m talking about spending the night in Chicago O’Hare Airport.

I did it. Much to my dismay. I’m not proud, nor am I happy. But I did it. I can add myself to the list of unfortunate travelers who’ve been stuck in that terrible airport in the middle of the winter. I know that if I took a poll, everyone I talked to would know someone who’s been stuck there. One would think that the grand-poobah of O’Hare would have figured it out by now. It’s the Midwest. It snows every year. It shouldn’t be a big deal. But apparently snow is still a new thing in Chicago. Go figure.

I spent the last weekend of Fake Break in Grinnell, Iowa. I managed to make it out of that fine Midwestern state with no problem on Sunday afternoon. It was my layover in Chicago where things started to go wrong.

I arrived in Chicago at about 6 p.m. Central time only to find out that my plane had already been delayed about an hour. As we finally boarded the aircraft at 7 p.m., the snow outside began to fall lightly, ominously, but soon escalated to the snow equivalent of a downpour.

Before I even got on the plane in Iowa I knew I was in for an adventure. The trip out had been too easy; I kept saying to myself, I’m going to get stuck! I boarded the plane anyway. What is one to do when one knows they’re in for trouble but can’t help themselves? I couldn’t jump up and yell, Let me off the plane! I wanted to get home. I had to get back to Elon. And they probably would have arrested me thinking I was a terrorist. I was doomed. It’s hard to know helplessness until you’ve been stuck in the snow on an airplane that’s pulled back from the jet-way.

So I sat. And I sat. They de-iced our plane. We taxied to the runway. And we sat. Then the de-icing material stopped working, so we taxied back. And then we sat. Then the flight attendants were over time. So we got news ones. And then we sat. About two hours later, the captain comes over the loud speaker to inform his weary passengers that the crew has now gone “illegal” and it had become unlawful for us to remain on the plane. You see, at this time, we could have flown to Washington, D.C. and back about three times.

We got off the plane and there I stayed. Booked on the 8 a.m. flight the next day, on stand-by for the 6 a.m. flight. I could have stayed in a hotel, but to be back for the 6 a.m. flight, I would have had to have left the hotel at 4 a.m. I made the decision to stay in Chicago about a half hour after getting off the plane, which happened to be at 12:15 on Monday morning.

I found my gate, B5, and made myself cozy on a bench. At about 2:30 a.m. the cleaning lady came through with her industrial vacuum. Seemingly unaware that the pile of coats, bags and feet belonged to a person, she kept running the vacuum under my bed, hitting the legs of the bench with torturous inconsistency, slowly driving me mad.

I wanted to jump up suddenly and yell, STOP! But was afraid I’d give her a heart attack, for which I would have probably been sued. It wasn’t worth it.

I made it out on the 6 a.m. flight, only to find out upon my arrival in D.C. that the 8 a.m. flight had been canceled. I made it back to my house around 10:45 a.m. on Monday, took a much-needed shower, an hour-long nap and then hopped in the car for my ride back to Elon.

Five hours, one stop at McDonald’s and one speeding ticket later, I was back in Burlington, cursing my luck but happier than I’ve ever been to see campus across the railroad tracks.