getting somewhere

When I talked to my mom on Wednesday, she mentioned the weather problems in the Midwest and worried about my flights that night. “Oh,” I said, “I’ve never had too many problems. It will be fine.”

I should have learned long ago not to say things like this.

When I got to the airport in Gone West at 11 pm, my 12:30 am flight to Minneapolis, (which, of course, I had not checked before I left home) was scheduled to leave at 1:40 am. At 2 am, the airline announced that they had “just found out” that the crew had been flying for too long and the flight would leave at 12 noon.

I spent an hour on hold while waiting in line to be rebooked. (Thank you, Northwest Airlines! WORST AIRLINE IN HISTORY. If I could avoid you, I would. Too bad my family lives in the Midwest and you are sometimes unavoidable, although I do try to fly United instead. I just have to settle for saying bad things about you. By the way, forcing me to listen to Delta advertisements while on hold waiting for a NWA agent after the Delta agents told me they can’t help me because I booked through Northwest? Does not breed good feelings for either airline.)

I was finally booked on a flight to Other PNW City at 5:30 am, and an onward flight to Detroit thereafter. “We can’t get you to Grand Rapids,” the agent told me, so I figured my parents would have to drive to Detroit to get me.

Too bad there was fog in OPNWC. We circled a few times, watching the glow of the city lights through the fog and the sun rising over the mountain, and then headed off to Ye Little Town in the Middle of Nowhere, Northwest. The YLT airport did not even have gates. It had one door and an open area, and 75 of us sat there on hold with Northwest Airlines again (did I mention how much I hate this airline?).

I called S. and said, “I might be spending Christmas with the B. family in YLT.” (The K.s and the B.s grew up together in Gone West, and J.B. went to college with S. and me in Grand Rapids.)

“I’m sure they will take you in,” she said.

After an hour, they filled the plane with extra fuel for future circling and sent us back to OPNWC. Obviously I had missed my flight to Detroit. Once I was safely booked on the next one and added an onward flight to Grand Rapids, I set out to spend the entire $20 in vouchers that NWA had given me. I refused to let a penny of it go to waste – after all, they had taken away my entire Christmas Eve that I planned to spend baking Christmas cookies with my sister. I also bought a dorky U-shaped neck pillow. Come what may, after a night of sitting awake in the Gone West airport, I intended to sleep on the flight to Detroit.

By the time I got to Detroit, there was freezing rain over the western half of the state and my mom heard on the news that they were “trying to keep a runway open” in Grand Rapids. The girl sitting next to me on the plane was also trying to get to AZO, and the final plan was that her dad would drive to Detroit and pick her up.

Northwest Airlines HATES it if you try to ditch one of the segments of your flight. They want to charge you money. Lots and lots of money. It took us two customer service agents, but we finally found one who understood the part about I HAVE BEEN AT THE AIRPORT SINCE 11 PM LAST NIGHT AND IF THIS FLIGHT TO GRAND RAPIDS IS CANCELED, FITS WILL BE THROWN, SO JUST LET ME DRIVE THIS SEGMENT.

It only took me 22 hours to get across five flying hours worth of country. And in two days I get to turn around and do the same thing in the other direction.