Snowmaggedon

So... funny story. This past week I had to travel for two different business trips. I travel once in a while for work, but it's not something I really enjoy so two trips in one week is a lot for me. My first stop was in Columbus, Ohio, for a client meeting. My flight wasn't until Monday afternoon, so I went into the office that morning. Before I left, I gave my client a quick call to touch base and she mentioned they were expecting a big snowstorm. I had to drop my car off at home before heading to the airport, so I ran in and threw an extra change of clothes, some workout gear, and a novel into my suitcase. I dreaded the thought of getting stuck there, but figured I might as well have clean clothes (and squeeze in a workout) if my flight did get cancelled.

Sure enough, when I arrived the snow was falling and the city of Columbus eventually declared it a "Stage 1 Snow Emergency." My client's office closed early and only about half the people who were supposed to attend my meeting were able to show up due to school closures and bad road conditions. So I spent the entire day mentally preparing myself for the fact that I would likely be camping out at the Hampton Inn for another night. But after hours of obsessively checking my flight info, there were no signs of cancellations, so I showed up to the airport and was surprised to not only make it out of Columbus, but leave on time-- which seems like quite a feat these days, even when it's not a "snow emergency."

Fast forward two days later. I had a half day client meeting up in Dallas, and was booked on an afternoon flight back to Austin that would have me getting home earlier than if I'd gone to the office for the day. Imagine my surprise when I land and find that it's dumping snow. In Dallas. Mid-morning I received a message that my original flight had been cancelled, but that they had booked me on another flight an hour and a half later. When my client meeting was over and I headed back to DFW, I found that my new flight was delayed another 30 minutes. That 30 minutes turned into another 30 minutes and then another 30 minutes. Finally, around 6pm, they said we could finally board the plane. At this point I was starving, but knowing that the flight back to Austin was only an hour, I figured I'd forgo the airport food and eat something better when I got home.

So we unsuspecting passengers board our flight. And then the pilot gets on and tells us we should "prepare ourselves for a very long night." Never a good sign. Turns out Dallas doesn't handle snow real well. And DFW doesn't have a whole lot of de-icing equipment. And when one of their de-icing trucks breaks down, you wind up with about 24 planes sitting out on the tarmac with nowhere to go.

So we sat on the plane. On the tarmac. For SEVEN HOURS. No, I am not joking. And, yes, Obama recently passed a law to ban that kind of thing, but apparently it doesn't actually kick in until April. Sweet. So, yes, 7 hours on the tarmac. I could have been 95% of the way to Paris. But, no, I was waiting for a 37 minute flight back to Austin. With no food. At one point I actually yelled at flight attendant because I was so angry they boarded us, knowing full well that we couldn't actually take off for hours, but didn't give us the heads up that we might want to hit up Micky D's for a value meal before taking our seats. Because, you know, it was 6pm. And normal humans like to eat dinner. And they knew there was NO FOOD on the plane.

The poor woman sitting next to me, who was on a trip back from visiting her family in Peru, took me took pity on me (or else she was just scared I might start gnawing on her coat) and gave me some special Peruvian dulce de leche cookies she had brought back with her. Then she told me had been traveling since 8pm the night before, which made me feel just a smidge guilty for complaining when she was on the 4th leg of her journey home and hadn't slept in over two days. And that she was going home to see her 4 year old, who she hadn't seen in two weeks. (And I could tell the cookies I was devouring were clearly for her little toddler.) But only just a smidge.

After about 4 hours on the tarmac, they opened up the bar on the plane and said they'd give us whatever we wanted. It was pretty much a free for all-- people triple fisting beers or whatever they could get their hands on. At that point, however, there wasn't much allure to the free alcohol. I got a Coke, which I never drink, figuring I should maximize the caloric value of whatever I could ingest... and also that the carbonation might help fill my stomach a little. And distract me from the fact that I didn't bring a book, that I had already read the American Airlines Magazine twice (and once earlier in the week on the way back from Ohio), and that my iPhone battery had died 3 hours earlier (stupid work emails.)

Finally, at about 1am, the much fabled de-icing truck made it's way to us, and we were able to take off. I made it home at 2:30am. It felt like Gilligan's Island-- the 3 hour cruise that suddenly turned into the excursion from hell. Let's just say that I'm not getting on a plane anytime soon, and I cannot wait for winter to be over.