Oh, how I wish the following story was fiction... but sadly, every bit of it is true.
This past weekend my wife and I travelled to Chicago for a family wedding and long weekend together - an anniversary trip of sorts, but really we'll take any excuse to go to one of our country's true "living" cities.
On this particular day, weather was GOING to be a problem. Thundertsorms in the Dallas area had actually closed DFW airport for a spell and more storms in Chicago weren't exactly helping matters. Our 5:55pm American flight, however, still showed that it was 100% on-time (even though when we got to the gate, it still said "Raleigh-Durham" on the placards.)
When it felt like we should be boarding I decided that perhaps it was worth asking a gate agent just what was going on since nobody I could see had any real interest in travelling to North Carolina's tobacco country.
When I inquired about the O'Hare flight, the agent clicked away at her computer and then gasped. An actual, audible gasp. Then she whispered to the agent next to her. This can't end well. She looked up at me and said "they just canceled it." Yes, that's right - straight from "on-time" to canceled. These guys aren't dicking around with "delayed." Luckily for me, I'm the first passenger to know this information. I have her get to work on getting us on the next one. I am told I get literally the last two seats - both middle seats and 10 rows apart, but hey - at least we'll get there tonight.
The new flight was scheduled for 7:30, but was now showing 8:00 so it was off to the bar. A couple of drinks later (and another half hour delay) we are on a plane and headed for Chicago. When we leave we are told that we should land around 10:15 or 10:30 and at this point most of us are just feeling lucky to be going tonight at all. Of course, as we get closer we're informed of "heavy traffic" at O'Hare due to storms and we begin a circling pattern over Lake Michigan. This costs us nearly another hour, but at 11pm, we're coming down through the storm clouds. It's bumpy - lightning is flashing all around us and when we do hit the ground, the wheels have no grip - skidding intermittently as we finally slow down and come to a stop about 100 feet short of our gate in a driving storm.
"Folks, this is your captain speaking. This storm is far too dangerous for Chicago to allow the grounds crew out - they have a lightning policy - so we're going to sit right here and wait out the storm until it's safe to park at the gate and get you and your bags off the plane. Sit tight."
Well, it IS storming pretty badly so this is an understandable delay, but it's just a thunderstorm, so how long could it be? As it turns out, it can be 3 hours. And I'm not talking about us sitting there going, "this is bullshit. They should have gotten us off the plane by now." No, this was legitimate monsoon-like conditions with lightning - a supercell just hovering over the field at O'Hare dumping gallons of water by the minute. The guy to my left had an app for that - a live doppler radar shot of the area - this storm was big and it wasn't moving.
An aside here: I would have loved to have slept through some of this - I mean, it would be after 2am when we finally got off the frickin' plane - but no, I had this ridiculous woman behind me who had recently gotten married and worked in public relations and thought this was just a wonderful time to flirt with the guy next to her. Both of them talking... and talking... and talking - far too loud for the 18 inches of space between them and both laughing WAY too loud at things that weren't even remotely funny. Add to that the American pilot seated to my right who took this opportunity to tell me the "long version" of his story about how the builders on his house screwed up his windows and his house was flooded and it's been four years and they're still fighting it out in court and the whole process is corrupt and he's trying to be a single dad now and on and on and on. You want to be off this plane now, too, don't you?
Well, you're in luck, because just after 2am it's off the plane we went and on down to baggage claim. I know what you're thinking. I'd be thinking it, too. There's no WAY our bag is there - just another chapter to this travel nightmare story. But actually, our bag came right out - a little wet, but no problem there. See? I told you this wasn't fiction. If it was fiction the bag would have been a problem. The REAL fiction, however, is still to come.
We go outside to catch a cab to our hotel and we have a new problem. You see, every plane that landed in Chicago in that entire 3-hour period was in the same position we were: they couldn't get to the gate. Therefore, every one of those people de-planed at exactly the same time. The line for a cab snaked all the way around terminal 3 and practically out of sight. To make matters worse - there are no cabs. The city is flooding, this monster storm is still happening. Cabs aren't easy to come by. Every 60 to 90 seconds a cab would appear and pluck two people out of this line of 300. Two hours go by and we're still at least half an hour from the front of this line and it's still raining. A guy on the other side of the partition from us is getting into a cab by himself. He asks if there's anyone who wants to do a shared ride downtown. It's as if my wife and I are shot out of a cannon. 50-pound bag and all I'm in that thing in 2.2 seconds. It's almost 4am... this is a disaster... but at least we're finally in a cab.
The guy we're sharing with is now giving the driver directions to his house. It's only 10 minutes from our hotel. This is going to work out just fine. As we turn off Armitage toward Ashland we're headed for a viaduct. The "El" train rides above and we're below where there's a little dip in the road that is currently filled with water. Our cab driver decides it looks safe enough to cross. Our cab driver is wrong.
As the car reaches the bottom of the viaduct the tailpipe goes under and that's all she wrote. The car is now dead in high water. You've seen those stories on the news of people stuck in cars as flood water rushes around it and you wonder, "what kind of idiot must be in that car?" Yeah, that idiot was me.
So now we must push the car out of the viaduct and onto higher ground. When we open the back door to get out, water rushes into the cab. That's how high we're talking here. Once the car is out of the impromptu river, we are all sitting inside. It's pouring rain. It's me, my wife, a cab driver and a stranger in a dead cab at 4 in the morning.
The driver calls a tow truck for himself and another cab for the rest of us and half an hour of uncomfortable silence later... we're in another cab. This time we drop our shared ride guy at his house and at 5am we FINALLY walk into our hotel's lobby drenched and dead tired.
"Sorry, sir. We have no rooms available."
Fucking hell.
I had a pre-paid reservation. In theory this means that I have already paid for a room and therefore it should be sitting empty right now with my name on it like an homage. I also called the hotel from the tarmac during our 3-hour delay to let them know that it was going to be a while, but I was still coming. Smart, right? Apparently not smart enough.
They explain to us that they have made accomodations for us at a hotel across the street (the "street" in this case being Wacker and therefore across the Chicago river) and that it might be a little while because they've called a cab to take us over there.
It's now so late that a guy has actually checked out to make HIS way to O'Hare. This, as it turns out, is a rare stroke of luck in this grease fire of a night. We wait half an hour for them to make up the room and it's all ours.
At 5:30am, after a cancelled flight, a delayed flight, a holding pattern over Lake Michigan, a bumpy landing, 3 hours on the tarmac, 2 hours waiting for a cab, a high-water rescue and no room at the inn... we finally hit the mattress in Chicago.
Anyone feel like writing the screenplay?
