MySpace "This is going down in history!" - Monday, February 6, 2006, 22:19

You know how I have been traveling almost every single week for the last five years, right? In that span of time, I have stashed away numerous memories related to travel. Some funny, some maddening, and some crazy. Well, today was one of those days, a very funny one, despite the fact that it didn't top the one with the straddling mechanic. I'll save that story for a future time. =)

I woke up at three in the freaking morning so I could catch my flight at O'Hare. Have I told you how much I despise flying out of there? Maybe I have. Anyway, the cab was colder than a freezer box! I rode all the way to the airport chattering my teeth! Surprisingly, I made it there right on time. I thought to myself, this is a harbinger of good things to come throughout the day. Boy, was I so wrong.

We all boarded the plane. My first leg was from Chicago to Detroit. We didn't push off in time, because there were some stupid passengers who had to take their sweet time to stash away everything they have in the tiny overhead space bin, blocking other boarding passengers, despite the numerous announcements by the flight attendant to keep the jackets or small bags under the seat in front of you. After we pushed off, we stood there on the taxiway for a while. Before long, the captain radioed in, "Sorry for the inconvenience, but the beacon light that is mandatory during flight is malfunctioned, and we have to change it. It shouldn't take more than fifteen minutes."

Okay, I can deal with that. Maybe I'll catch some shut eye too... Surprisingly, the replacement was done a little bit over fifteen minutes. Kudos to the captain! I still have a little bit of a buffer to catch my connecting flight.

When we got to Detroit, we were all stuck at the gate for almost twenty minutes! What? The jetway broke! How can jetways break? Apparently they couldn't get the autoleveler, which moves it up and down to meet the height of doors of various types of planes. Now I start to panic. The flight attendant then announced that those who does not have a 9:00 AM connecting flight should sit back down and let others deplane so we have a chance to make a run for it. Of course, every passenger on that plane has a 9:00 AM connecting flight. Yeah right...

No matter how nice Detroit Metro Airport is, I hate it there whenever I am flying to a small city. Because that usually means you have to run down the long corridor of Concourse A, then dash through the tunnel to Concourse B/C, which the tunnel itself is the length of two football fields. And this is just one terminal! How many airports can you think of that has three terminals, and within each terminal, multiple concourses? Crazy!!!

Anyway, I made it to the gate in the nick of time. Only to realize that my flight from Detroit to Pellston has been delayed due mechanical issues with the plane. Awesome! Not... With each update at fifteen minutes apart, the gate guard would just keep on pushing out the departure time. And they wouldn't tell us what was so severely wrong with the plane.

Finally, about an hour later, the gate nazi announced that the plane is beyond repair, and that they have secured a replacement plane at another gate. Woo hoo!!! Of course, we had to wait a while for the crew to arrive. And when they did, they boarded us pronto. Nice! But after we all sat down in this little propeller powered puddle jumper, we just sat there at the gate. Huh?!? Then the captain announced, "The waste tank in the lavatory is full, and we are just waiting for the sanitation crew to empty it. As soon as that is done, we'll try to get you to Pellston as soon as we safely can." Aarrgghh... More waiting.

Lucky me, I sat next to this larger size woman who's certain body parts rolled over the armrest and rested against my torso. ...in my own space. That's no big deal, until she coughed. And coughed. And coughed. She's sick! And she doesn't cover her mouth either. There were a couple times she coughed in my direction, because I was sitting in the aisle, and she was leaning back against the window facing me, napping! Yuck! I tried to block her aeronautical atomized germ droplets with my fresh USA Today paper. Needless to say, it wasn't so fresh after a few minutes.

Sigh... After about fifteen minutes, we finally get pushed back on the taxiway. Yay!!! Finally! Of course, I wasn't looking forward to getting to work as soon as possible, but I didn't want to be stuck in this mess for all day either. And then... We stopped moving. In the middle of the taxiway. We were not even at the lane to move towards the runway. After another ten agonizing minutes, the captain's voice cracked over the speakers, "You're not going to believe this, but the tug that was pushing us back just died. They're getting a tow tug to move the dead tug, and they'll find another tug to push us back."

By this time, I just rolled my eyes, looked at the passenger sitting in the aisle opposite of myself, and laughed. Wow! Inconceivable! Since our plane was blocking the way for other planes that need to get queued up for the runway, we got a tow tug and replacement tug pretty quickly. Which, by all standards, was less than ten minutes. And finally thereafter, we're in the air! Hooray!

But wait! The story doesn't end there! It gets better. Apparently up in Michigan there were strong winds and snow storms, and we were warned of severe turbulence. Ha ha, no worries. I have been through many of them, especially in small puddle jumpers. I can weather this. But not this time. Try getting tossed around violently for almost half an hour non-stop. That made me sick. Just for the record, that was my first air travel related sickness I have ever experienced in 28 years. I made history...

Now you would think that things can only get better once we have landed almost two hours later, right? No. Since Pellston is such a small airport, which only have one gate to serve two airlines, the parking lot and the rental car lot are only forty wards away from the secured gate area. In fact, what divides the parking lot and the runway is just a chain link fence, the same one you see at construction sites back home in Chicago! It's that small! Anyway, after getting the keys to my Camry, I walked out there to the car. There was a layer of frozen ice on the ground. And the wind was howling hard. And before you know it, the wind blew me so hard that I slipped on the ice sideways and crashed. That has NEVER happened to me before. By then, all I could do was stay on the ground and laugh out loud. Just like that time last summer when I went rollerblading for the first time of the season, in which I fell on my ass in front of a cute girl crossing the intersection. Ha ha ha... I'm sure if there were other people around, they would think that I must have gone mad.

I'll tell you what, though. I don't think I like it here during the winter. I was here last September, and it was gorgeous. But now, I feel like I am in a barren wasteland of Russian tundra. Okay, maybe it's not that bad, but the winds here are just as bad, if not worse, than Chicago. One thing is for sure though. I will be using the treadmill instead of running along the lake this time around.

Oh, and remember that lady that was so disgusting? I should disclose that when I got to work at the hospital in Petoskey, there she was. With a supersize cup of soda from Wendy's. It turns out that this lady is a coworker of mine, and was assigned to the same client. Ack!!! Now every time we pass each other in the hall way, there will forever be a moment of awkwardness. Oh well... Cest le vie! =)