I boarded the plane and took my seat in row 1. The flight attendant quickly greeted me, offered me some water, and then paused. "Didn't you just get here?" Oh, no, not this question again. Turns out it was the same flight crew IAD-MIA as it was MIA-ORD. I had just been caught. She seemed very curious why someone would come all the way to Miami for less than an hour. I can only imagine what was going through her head, seeing as how I was by myself and Miami is also the drug trafficking gateway to North America. I felt the need to explain. $65 ticket, almost 7,000 miles, the cert was about the expire anyway..."You're crazy," is what I got.
You think someone who chose to fly for a living wouldn't be so judgmental of someone who does it for fun, but she was. Don't get me wrong, she was completely professional, but she was just not nice. I kept getting these strange looks from her, like those that a disapproving parent gives to a child. Seat 1A on the regional jet was starting to feel more like timeout than first class.
At one point, my flight attendant pointed me out to the other fight attendant in the back who had served me during the previous flight. The two shared a point-and-laugh moment followed by some rolling of the eyes. I was beginning to feel very uncomfortable, and with no one next to me to talk to, the time passed by very slowly.
Luckily, the flight to Chicago was in reality pretty short. Our pilots tried to make it there as fast as they could because of the huge storm on the way. It was a matter of hours before that airport was getting shut down, and at this point, I had no idea whether or not my connecting flight back to San Francisco was ever going to leave that day.
When we landed everyone clapped. It had been a rough descent, but nothing too bad, nothing to warrant clapping. I felt like such celebration should be saved for when we actually got out of Chicago, not for when we arrived. Surely, I wasn't the only one on that plane with a connecting flight.
Well, as it turns out I probably was the only one with a connecting flight that day, because everything else was cancelled. The weather didn't even seem that bad. It was high overcast, a little bit windy when we landed, but for the most part, conditions were still pretty clear- good visibility down the runways, no accumulation of snow on the ground. What was this? A joke?
I quickly headed to B16, where my flight was getting ready to leave. The scene I encountered could only be described as something resembling rats trying to jump off a burning ship; everyone wanted out of Chicago. There was pushing, there was shoving, there was even some crying. It was a stark contrast to the rest of the airport that was quickly emptying out as people gave up and went home.
There was no way I was going to make this upgrade. I mean I feel a little bad that that was the only thing I was thinking of at the time, you know, while so many other people would just be grateful be on the flight, but even if I did clear there was no way the gate agents were even going to deal with me. They had their hands full.
I took the first opportunity that came to board the plane. As soon as they called "First Class, Global Service, 1K." I jumped in line right behind them. There is no doubt that I was the first Premier Executive. While we were standing in the jet way ready to get on the plane, I heard this terrible noise, and then felt this jolt like there was an earthquake, except that it wasn't an earthquake. It was the wind.
As I took my seat, I looked out the window and noticed the conditions had deteriorated significantly just in the few minutes it took to get on board and they continued to deteriorate into full white-out condition in just a matter of seconds. The twenty minutes that followed seemed like an eternity as they continued to board the plane. Then, they finally closed the door. We were finally going to get out of there, or so I thought.
The next few minutes seemed even more like an eternity as we watched the ground crew scurry around outside trying to load the very last of the bags. I felt really bad for them. It looked really nasty out there. It looked like it was hard to even walk. It seemed for every one step they took forward, the wind would blow them back about three steps. My attention was then diverted to the nearly 2 inches that had accumulated on the fins sticking out of the engine and on top of the wings.
As a pilot I know that ice and snow are not things you want piling up on critical control surfaces of an aircraft. Even a thin layer can make the aerodynamics of a jumbo jet mimic those of a brick. With not a de-ice truck in sight, I began to get worried.
I'm typically not a nervous flyer, but I was starting to get really scared. Obviously the weather wasn't getting any better. We were already delayed, and I was getting increasingly frustrated on how long it was taking to get out of there. I felt the longer we waited, the higher my chances of spending the night in an airport motel were going to be.
A passing flight attendant must have picked up on my uneasiness and stopped to console me. "Don't worry ma'am, everything is going to be fine. You're sitting next to a pilot." Well one thing about pilots is that they will seek out and make friends with other pilots, and I'm no exception. But then again, I like to make friends with everyone. I quickly started up a conversation with the man sitting directly in front of me. It might have seemed like a stupid question, but I asked it anyway, "They're going to de-ice us right?" He told me that the de-icing trucks would be closer out to the runways, not at the gate today, and then went on to cover the eccentricities of why at some airports on some days it is done like that and sometimes it isn't. He then continued to cover the finer points of propylene glycol, its different colors, and its uses. I'm sure most people would probably be bored by the conversation, but I actually found it quite fascinating and I learned a lot.
After a short taxi and quick stop at the de-icing trucks, we took off. You know the weather is bad when you're getting tossed around in a plane that big. I wouldn't have wanted to be leaving Chicago on anything smaller or less powerful that a 777.
Once we were in the air, my conversation with the pilot continued and we started to cover more normal topics, like where are you from and where do you live. It turns out the United A319/A320 captain sitting in front of me on the flight from Chicago was one of my neighbors. We were both headed home.
Somewhere just east of Denver was where the clouds finally started to break and I could see the ground for the first time. Everything was white. It was a beautiful scene. I quickly whipped out my camera and started taking pictures. I think I got more shots for my photoblog on half of this flight than I have on other entire trips. It was exhilarating.
www.thirtysixthousand.com
By the time we were over Nevada, the snow started to disappear, but I could tell the weather was still bad; even though it was sunny, there were huge dust clouds reaching thousands of feet into the air. It was breathtaking. The final minutes of the flight over the Sierras was gorgeous, and we started our descent into very sunny California. The entire trip- the $65 dollars, the day away from home, the hassle of driving to the city was worth it just for that last flight.
Almost home
It was just about sunset when we reached San Francisco, and the weather was unseasonably mild. I still couldn't believe I had escaped the worst storm of the decade. The news coverage of the storm made it even more surreal and the fact that I was only there for an hour made it almost like it never even happened. By this time, everyone in my family had tried to call me to see if I was alright. A few of the now 20 or so @hulagrrl210 twitter followers were now tweeting me and congratulating me on my arrival at SFO.
The pilot I met on the flight, who was also driving home, asked me if I wanted to get some coffee and wait for rush hour traffic to subside. I graciously declined. I didn't want any more delays. He was a really nice guy, and I turned him down only because I was sure, that somewhere, someday, we would meet again.
THE END