I have also gone to (and returned from) Omaha, and spent the New Year with Daisy, her parents, one of her sisters, and her nephew. It was fun. Daisy and I returned to Kansas last night, and she spent the night here before driving home this afternoon. I miss her already, but I am also glad to get some true alone time to myself for, really, the first time since before my birthday. I was home from West Virginia for a little more than 24 hours before I made my trip up to Omaha. I'll tell the story of that trip in my next post here, but if you're wondering why I was only back home for 24 hours before I immediately went to Omaha, keep reading.
I also warn you now that this is going to be a very long post, as there's a lot to tell. A lot to tell. So, if you're not interested in all the details of how and when I got back home, you may just want to skim or completely skip this post. It's up to you.
So. I last left off at Christmas Eve. Christmas Day was last Tuesday; I was scheduled to fly home on the 26th, which meant that we'd have a quick Christmas, I would pack everything up, and then get the flight back to Wichita before I had a few days in the interim to decompress with the kitties before I made the journey to Omaha to spend the New Year with Daisy.
This is not -- I repeat -- is not what happened.
Christmas itself was wonderful; my parents loved their gifts from me -- a large assortment of tie-dyes for both of them being the big stuff that I had to ship home, along with DVDs of The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises, and The Amazing Spider-Man. Yes, discs that I purchased, not copied discs. I got them a few other things while I was there, as well -- I may have mentioned before that I bought my mother a few jackets, as well as a few Captain America t-shirts for my dad. I also had to ship, along with the above items, a mini-theremin that my mother had me order for my dad, as my mother will never order anything online with her credit cards (she's quite paranoid about online shopping). Instead of paying me back for it, I told her to get me a pair of pants and a sweatshirt so that I could save space in packing when I flew out. She did this -- that's why she ended up getting me two of my cheaper sweaters at Gabe's when I was there this time around. The pants I wore for most of my time there, and ended up wearing them back home to Kansas.
The vast majority of the stuff my parents got me for Christmas is still sitting in the overstuffed chair in my room at my parents' house, as I could not bring it back with me on the plane. They will be shipping it to me within the next several days, once the weather back home clears up (they've been getting lots of snow since the night I flew back home). This also includes a lot of stuff I brought with me out there, but didn't have room to fly back with. There were a lot of gifts, so I know I'll miss some of them, but from what I can remember, here's the bigger stuff:
- A massive faux-fur throw blanket
- A crock pot as well as a rice cooker (this must be the year of appliances, no?)
- A thickly-insulated WVU zip-up hoodie
- A stack of trade paperbacks of different Marvel series
- Pajama pants and a long-sleeved thermal shirt (both of which I brought home)
- A stocking full of coffee, candy, jerky, and the like
- A $50 Amazon gift card, a $50 Walmart gift card, and a $50 Visa gift card
- Some cash (most of which has been spent now; trip to Omaha, remember?)
Etc. When they ship my boxes of stuff to me, I will be sure to get pictures to post here. There was a lot of it, and until it all arrives, I can neither remember it all nor do it justice with a simple bulleted list. As always, my parents went all out for me, even though they really didn't need to. I'm also pretty sure they know what they want to get me for next year's Christmas -- I went nuts over their Keurig machine (because it's oh-so-awesome) and a few other things they had at the house. With the $50 Amazon gift card adding to the $25 one Wayne and Jane gave me when we had lunch with them, I was able to order a new Hamilton Beach BrewStation coffeemaker to replace the one I had before, which died after about five years' use this past summer. I also ordered all of Firefly, as well as Serenity, on Blu-ray, as I'd purchased the simple DVD set for Daisy for Christmas and I wanted the extras the Blu-ray sets offered. I did this last night after I got home, actually. But, again, I'm getting ahead of myself.
My dad went to his parents' for Christmas, and mom took a nap on the couch. I, in the meantime, did all of my laundry in preparation for my trip home the next day, talked to Daisy for a while on the laptop, and eventually went to bed fairly early myself -- I would have to get up early, as I knew we'd be leaving the house at 8AM to get me on my flight. Before I went to sleep, I set my OS to upgrade to Ubuntu 12.10 (from 12.04), as I knew that would take most of the night with how slow my parents' internet is at home (read: terrible). As a result, I was in bed and passed out even before my dad got home from his parents' around 11 or so. It was a good Christmas, just fairly uneventful.
When I woke up the next morning, the 26th, is when the problems began.
I woke up around 3AM or so, unable to sleep any longer on my old bed in my room. This was fine; it would allow me to wake up, get some coffee in me, and shower before I would have to get ready to leave the house to catch the plane. My flight out of Pittsburgh would leave at 12:15. This meant we had to leave the house no later than 8, as it is a 90-minute-or-so drive up to the airport, and with everyone flying home after Christmas, the security lines were likely to be a nightmare. Leaving at 8 would give us a little wiggle room, so to speak, when it came to getting in and out. I'd first fly into Chicago/O'Hare, and then from there fly back to Wichita. I'd spend less than three hours in the air, but more than anything else it was the hassle of the airports themselves that made the trip really long.
However, the weather had other plans. In the overnight hours of Christmas, Winter Storm Euclid -- which had torn through the south, causing tornadoes and crazy amounts of snow/wind/rain -- had made its track north, and was scheduled to hit my parents that afternoon.
Once my OS had upgraded cleanly, between 4AM and 5AM I checked my flight status on the American Airlines website -- both flights were on time and not delayed. This was tricky timing, really; the storm was going to roll into the area around noon or so, and my plane was to take off at 12:15, which is why I was checking my flight status. Chicago, which I was flying into first, wasn't supposed to be hit by the storm at all -- it was going to go juuuuust south of the city. So it was, really, all a matter of timing. If I could get off the ground and above the clouds before the storm hit Pittsburgh, everything would be fine. It wasn't doing anything at home but spitting snow and a little sleet -- like it always does on top of the mountain -- so we weren't too concerned with the roads. Around 8AM, we began our trek to the airport.
Then we noticed something.
The further north we drove, the worse the weather got. Shortly after we crossed the border into Pennsylvania, it became all snow -- heavy, wet snow -- the kind that packs down onto the roads and makes everything a mess. This was not a good sign. We stopped at a rest stop so that I could pee before we got to the airport, and in the time it took me to go to/from the car and back, my coat and hair were covered in snow. This did not bode well. Still, before I left the house, I had checked and my flights were on time, and when I'd landed in Pittsburgh on the previous Friday, it had been snowing almost as hard, so I wasn't incredibly concerned yet. I also had my phone on, in case the travel agent or airline would call or text with updated info on the flights or delays for them -- which they almost always tend to do when anything changes from the normal schedule.
So, we got to Pittsburgh and it was snowing like hell. In fact, it was snowing the hardest I've seen it snow anywhere in the past seven or eight years. My dad's truck got covered in the parking lot almost as soon as we'd parked it, which wasn't a good sign. Getting inside and brushing ourselves off, we looked up at the big scheduling screen -- only to see that my flight to Chicago had been canceled. Yep. Canceled. We double-checked.
Hm.
This had never happened to me before on any trip I'd been on. However, I didn't even let this discourage me too much; after all, I knew even then that if my flight had been canceled, I'd be put on the next available one to Chicago, and that would be the end of it. The same would happen in Chicago once I got there. I'd get home a little later than expected, but oh well. It was understandable with the weather conditions, really.
"Well, let's go upstairs to the check-in counter and see what's going on," Mom said. So we did...only to be greeted with a line that was about thirty people long, and stretched back through the airport's check-in lobby area. Christ.
After waiting for a good ten minutes or so, I told Mom to hold my place in line, because I wanted to try something -- I had my e-ticket number, which would allow me to print out boarding passes from the automated check-in machine...which did not have a line for it. I knew my flight had been canceled, but if I tried to check in, I thought that maybe it would give me an updated or replacement flight number and time, which would be all I needed as long as it gave me boarding passes. It was, at least, worth a shot.
When I put my number into the machine, it gave me a single printout that said I needed to take it to the counter and discuss my flight with the attendants on duty. Okay, I thought, this is because it's been canceled, which I already know. It appeared that there was no way that I was getting out of waiting in line for an hour with everyone else who was unhappy and disgruntled and just trying to get into the air. I came back to the line and relayed this information to my mother, who waited there with me for who knows how long until I was able to get up to the counter.
"I tried to check in and it gave me this printout," I told the lady there.
She asked me for my ID and then for where I was going. I told her Chicago.
"Yeah, it's canceled," she said.
No shit, really?
"Okay, so what do I do?" I asked her.
"There's nothing else going to Chicago today," she said. "Everything's getting canceled because of the weather."
"Nothing at all?" my mother and I both asked, at basically the same time.
"Nope. Earliest flight back there is Friday."
That was, at that point, two days away.
"Yeah, that's not acceptable," my mother said, speaking up. "My son needs to fly back there today."
"All I can do is tell you to call this number," the lady said, handing my mother a card, "and they will do what they can to help you. I can't do anything else from here."
We wrote down the number, and pissed off, left the line.
"Call [travel agent]," I said. "It's all we can do. See if she can switch me to another flight."
So that's what we did. Walking to a quieter part of the airport upstairs -- the drive-up baggage check drop-off -- we called the travel agent. She found a United flight for me that left at a little after 1PM, would fly into St. Louis and then into Houston, but would get me back to Wichita around 11PM that night. I let my mother make the arrangements and went outside to smoke (since there's a designated smoking area right there at that spot). While I was outside, I heard the baggage claim guys say that Southwest had canceled all remaining flights out of Pittsburgh for the remainder of the day. I was immediately thankful that I wasn't flying Southwest, but it was snowing like hell, even harder than before.
Anyway, we told the travel agent to switch my ticket to the United flight, and she did. She then told us to go back to the American Airlines counter and tell them to update my flight records and information in their system so that they would know of the transfer -- and to also tell the woman there that it was bullshit that she said she "can't do anything else from here" -- American Airlines canceled my flight, so therefore it is their job to find me a new one, whether it's on their airline or not, not anyone else's. All of that can be, and is, done from that counter. Since my travel agent did the counter lady's work for her, and found me that flight ready-to-go, all I had to do was tell her to update my ticket info in the system, and then I could go to the United counter and check in there. In essence, the woman at the American Airlines counter was not doing her job, and was being obstinant about it. So, we got back in line, and 20 minutes later, finally made it back to the counter again.
"I can tell you there's nothing flying out of here for Chicago at all," the lady said.
We know that, dumbshit.
"Look," I said, "my end destination is Wichita. I don't have to fly into Chicago. I just need to get on something that'll get me to Wichita."
"We've called our travel agent. There's a seat on a United flight at 1. She said all you have to do is update the ticket info to get him on it," Mom said.
"Ma'am, there's nothing flying out of here; you can go to any counter and they'll tell you the exact same thing I'm telling you. There's nothing more I can do from here except to tell you to call this number," she said, repeating the number to my mother.
"Then you call my travel agent and you talk to her," Mom said, about ready to slap this woman. "Because he's all ready to fly out on this flight that is still on schedule and on time, and all you have to do is update his info in the system."
"I'm not calling your travel agent," she said, laughing at us like we were the ones being assholes. "I told you, there's nothing flying out of here today, and I don't care what your travel agent says -- we have nothing else leaving. Not my job. "
"Yes, yes it is," my mother said, becoming even more pissed off. "You canceled the flight, therefore it is your job to get him on another one. We've done that already."
I would've been embarrassed at my mother's outburst at this woman had she not been absolutely right about everything that had been said, and had this woman not been a complete bitch about typing a simple updated flight itinerary into the computer in front of her. As it stood, however, I was just as pissed off at her as my mother was. She didn't even take my ID again to, y'know, actually do what she was supposed to do; instead she again repeated to my mother that we were to call this certain number, and that she couldn't do anything else.
"Forget it, Mom," I said, "let's just go. We'll call [agent] back and then if there's nothing else that can be done, we'll call this number."
And we left the counter for a second time. I can't remember any time where I've had worse customer service anywhere, for any goods or services. Mom called the travel agent back to see what was going on; I told her that whatever she could do would be fine, I didn't care where I had to fly through or when; as long as my end destination was Wichita, it didn't matter. I went out to have another smoke while she called the travel agent again, as I was more stressed and pissed off than I'd been in a very long time. I was either going to fly out or I wasn't, but regardless there was little I could do. I was, quite literally, along for the ride on this one.
When I came back in, I was told that the United flight that I was supposed to get on was indeed in the system and indeed had open seats while we were arguing with the counter lady, but in the interim it had been canceled as well -- along with all of United's other flights out of Pittsburgh. United, Southwest, American Airlines, and US Airways had canceled all of their flights out of Pittsburgh for the day. She said that she'd see if there was anything else she could do, and would call us back.
A few minutes later, when she called me back on my phone, the situation was grim.
"Flights are falling like dominoes," she said. "What I can tell you, sadly, is that you're not getting out of there today. The good news is that there's another United flight that leaves tomorrow night at 6:45, but there's an extra charge for that. It'll be recouped by American Airlines, so you'll be able to get some money back from it, but it's a shady shot -- it'll be coming out of D.C., and if it's delayed you'll miss your connection in Chicago and you'll be stranded there just like you're stuck in Pittsburgh right now. The other option is to fly out on Friday at the same time you're flying out today."
"Well, talk to Mom and we'll figure something out," I said. "If I can't fly out today, I can't fly out today -- but I'd like to get home as soon as possible, since I've got the cats."
Our travel agent has known me/our family for as long as I've been alive, basically -- my mother has been friends with her for as long as I can remember. There's little she wouldn't do for us.
That's basically all there was to it.
"Well, there's no getting out of here today then," I said. "Might as well turn around and go back home before it gets any worse outside."
By this time, there was a good two inches more snow on the ground and on the truck. The roads were quickly becoming terrible. The storm was hitting earlier than expected -- we'd been inside the airport for barely an hour. It was only a little after 11, and my flight hadn't been expected to lift off until 12:15. When we left, the board was filled with canceled flights -- the lady at the American Airlines counter was right about one thing, at least: nothing was flying out of Pittsburgh that day. I would have this confirmed to me later that night once I got back home; thousands of flights had been canceled and almost all airports from Virginia to Maine had basically shut down.
"This is why I don't travel in the winter," I told my parents. "This is why I really don't like to travel, period."
"It's not our fault," Mom said.
"I know it's not. I'm not mad at you guys, not at all. Can't help the weather, can't change that."
I was really frustrated. My worst nightmare had come true, the one that kept me from visiting home last Christmas or during any time in winter -- the fear that I'd get stuck there and be unable to get home, leaving my cats stranded for extra time here in Newton with limited food and water to last them through the additional days. But, as always, I do my best to prepare for the worst -- I'd given them three massive bowls of water, two fresh litter pans, and three overflowing bowls of food (probably the equivalent of an entire bag of cat food between the three of them). While this calmed me somewhat -- knowing that they'd probably be okay, it didn't really ease my nervousness that much. Regardless, there was nothing I could do about it until I got back home to take care of them. I just had to wait and get home whenever the weather, and the flights, would allow me to.
The drive back home to West Virginia was very, very slow -- about 35mph the entire way, as it was snowing hard and people were in bumper-to-bumper traffic because of it. I don't know how long it took to get back to Morgantown, but I know I slept through a good chunk of it, as I was exhausted, stressed, and frustrated. Once we were back in town, we stopped at the drugstore because the parents had stuff to pick up, and I bought two packs of cigarettes -- I was expecting to be home, and hadn't brought more than a few packs with me because of that, so I had to prepare in case I was stuck home longer than I was already fearing I would be. We then went to dinner at the other Mexican place in town before going back up the mountain. Morgantown hadn't gotten any of the snow yet aside from some light snow showers; apparently, for some reason, the storm was tracking more north than south, and Pittsburgh and north of there was going to get the worst of it. Jane texted me to make sure I was okay and wasn't still stuck in the airport (I'd tweeted that my flights had been canceled), and told me that it had finally stopped snowing in Pittsburgh for the moment.
That night, we made arrangements to call the travel agent back in the morning -- I told Mom that if she could get me on the 6:45PM flight the next night without problems or delays, I wanted to go for it. If not, or if there was an issue of some sort, I had no choice to wait until Friday. Of course, you can understand that I wanted to get home sooner rather than later, not just because of the cats (which were a large factor, obviously) but because I was exhausted and because the Wichita airport charges me more for every day my car was parked there. As it was the end of the year, I was (and still am) at my lowest point for money, really -- I had cash, but those parking machines only take cards. Again, something else I didn't really have control over. I'm really not a control freak or anything like that, but I do like to have some ability to control the situation I'm in most of the time, or at least control small parts of it. This time I just had to deal with it -- I was stuck in West Virginia because of weather, and there was nothing I could do about it. It's not like I could wave my hand and magically make snow disappear or make flights take off. I just had to wait.
In the meantime, Mom went to bed early that night, and us men stayed up to watch The Avengers, which my dad hadn't yet seen. The snow was coming down pretty good, and I didn't know if we would be able to easily get out the next day even if I could get on that evening flight. At 3AM, right before bed, I checked Pittsburgh Airport's arrivals and departures list from my laptop -- everything was, once more, flying in and out of the airport on schedule, without even any delays. This I took as a good sign. I left a note for Mom on the counter to tell her this, and to reiterate that if I could get on that evening flight, to get me on it when she called the travel agent back in the morning.
When I awoke in the morning, Mom called the travel agent and found out that for some reason I couldn't take the evening flight -- mainly based on the delays out of D.C. and the very real possibility that I would be stranded in Chicago if anything was delayed for even a few minutes, which would leave me flying out of O'Hare on Friday anyhow since the flight in there was so late. It wasn't worth the risk or the drive back up to the airport in the weather again, so Mom got me booked on the Friday flight home -- same times, same airports, same flight numbers and everything. It was either that or wait even longer, something I didn't want to do when I was already worried about the cats. Friday it was, Friday it would be. Two days later than I'd planned, but I should have been able to get home just fine.
This was not the case.
I got up at 5AM on Friday morning. I set the alarm clock in my room, even, so that I could do so. This will mark the only time over the course of my entire winter break that I will get up that early. I made coffee, checked the weather, and checked my flight statuses. I was good. The flights were on time, and everything was looking good. Most, if not all, flights had resumed in the wake of Euclid, even if some of them had been delayed here and there. However, we were facing the same sort of weather situation that we'd faced two days earlier -- about twelve hours after I was planning to fly out, a second significant snowstorm would hit the area (which, according to an email from my mother this morning, is still happening back home; she said it hasn't stopped snowing since I left the house). If I didn't make it out on Friday, I didn't know when my next opportunity would be; I was quite literally flying between storms and over some others. Not to mention that the airport, once we got back there, was a holy hell clusterfuck mess. If I'd thought that it was busy on the day after Christmas, I was wrong. Oh hell was I wrong.
This time, the American Airlines counter line was twice as long as it had been two days before -- and yes, the same woman was still working there. Knowing that my flight was on time and had not been canceled that day, I walked right up to the self-check-in, typed in my ticket number, printed my boarding passes, and got the hell out of there. I resisted the urge -- a very strong urge, mind you -- to give the woman at the counter the finger. I internally applauded my use of self-control.
Finally, I was in the security line. I told my parents goodbye, and they left. I told them that if anything changed, I would let them know -- but otherwise I would make sure to tell them once I got back on the ground in Wichita so that they weren't worried about me. Security went quickly this time around, and soon enough I was on the way to my gate.
My flight was scheduled to fly out of gate D88 -- the very last gate at the very end of the D terminal at the outer edge of the airport -- and I sat down at the gate around 11:20. My flight was scheduled to leave at 12:15. I waited. I ate a box of Goldfish crackers and two packs of peanuts I'd brought with me from home, so that I wouldn't be hungry and wouldn't want to spend a ton of money on airport food; money was, and is, at a premium. There was a flight in the gate scheduled to fly out before mine did; it was going to New York. There were a lot of people waiting for that flight, which was supposed to leave at 11:30. It had not even arrived at the gate yet. Hm. I should've taken this as a bad sign.
It came in about half an hour late, and took another 15 minutes to unload everyone. That put it at 12:05 before the New York passengers could even board their plane. I had my earphones in, but I heard the announcement: my flight was delayed by an hour, and it was completely full and overbooked -- anyone who could wait and take a later flight, please come to the counter and you will get a $250 credit and free baggage check, etc. My flight out of O'Hare, now that my flight out of Pittsburgh was being delayed until at least 1:15, would be almost directly after I got off the plane there -- I would have to get to my gate quickly once I got into Chicago in order to make my flight home to Wichita. I wasn't incredibly concerned about this, as I had a bit of wiggle room in my flight schedule, but it was still a pain in the ass to be on the ground when I should've been in the air.
1:15 came and went. The flight got delayed another fifteen minutes. On the other side of the D terminal from where I was sitting, a flight through Dallas had been canceled, and they were trying to cram two planes' worth of passengers onto one flight. This furthered my resolve that I am never fucking flying on American Airlines ever again. These people clearly need to get their shit together.
Finally, my plane pulled in, and by 2PM I was in the air, bound for Chicago. I got on the ground there without incident, found the terminal I was supposed to board my flight on, and saw....that it was delayed.
Who could've guessed, right?
I had about an hour to kill now before I would be able to even board the plane back home, and I was starving. I went to some deli place in the center of all the terminals in O'Hare and bought a sandwich and two bags of chips. It cost me $15, but it was apparent that I wasn't getting home before dark anyhow, so fuck it. It was also $6 for a bottle of water at Starbucks, too. Six goddamned dollars. For a bottle of water.
Again, let me reiterate: I hate to travel.
I returned to my terminal to find that there were no chairs available to sit in. That's how crowded that terminal was. We shared a gate with the British Airways gate, which had a full load of passengers flying back to England (I can only assume), and my flight was completely full up as well. So, I said "fuck it," and sat in the middle of the floor, eating my sandwich and chips, with people staring at me. I was tired, I was hungry, and I no longer cared. I just wanted to get home. I texted Daisy to tell her that I was on the ground in Chicago but my flight home, again, was delayed.
I finally got off the plane in Wichita around 5PM. It was dark. It was cold. And my car still needed me to pour a quart of oil into her, which I did. I drove home in the cold and dark, exhausted, to find my cats just fine -- they had drank almost all of their water and decimated their food, but they were fine. And I was home. I immediately ordered -- as mentioned before -- $60 worth of Papa John's pizza, and had a horrible-for-me feast. It was over. I was home safely.
So yeah, there's my story of the trip. I told you it was long. Next, I'll tell you the story of the trip to Omaha...
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