One More Flight Story and That's It

02/08/2007

Okay, I promise, this is absolutely the last story wherein I am anywhere close to an airplane.  You can count on it.

Tuesday I traveled out of Baltimore Washington International on an Air Tran flight to Dayton, Ohio.  These days I travel on whatever airline will offer me a non-stop flight to and from my destination.  Tuesday it just happened to need to get to Dayton, Ohio, and Air Tran offered a round trip, non-stop airfare of $183.80.  What a deal, eh?  I took it.

Tuesday morning I drove the 110 miles from Beautiful Downtown Berkeley Springs (aka Town of Bath), WV, population 711, to BWI for my flight.  Along the way I listen to various weather reports.  The purpose of my trip was to work with one of my co-workers and travel from where he lives in Dayton to Cincinnati to see some customers.  The drive from Dayton to Cincinnati is about an hour under normal conditions.  Key word – normal.  I knew if there was a big weather issue, my guy would have called me and let me know before I made the trip and wasted company money.  Since he didn’t, I decided all was well.  This day proved to be anything but normal, and all was not well.

At 11am I boarded the plane and took my window seat, 2A, in the first class section (note: I paid $40 out of my own pocket for the privilege of sitting up with the elitists).  I got to watch everyone board and make their way to the back cabin.  I noticed one gentleman board the plane with the exactly the same bag I had, except I checked mine as I typically do.  I hate to carry a bag onto any plane, and I don’t think much of people who bring bags on the plane that I believe should be checked, but that’s a different story.  I watched him as he loaded the bag into the bin above my head.  This little vision plays an important part later in this episode.

As the Air Tran plane descended from the heavens into the Dayton airport I saw the snow, light snow, but nonetheless, snow.  It was very cold, something like three degrees.  Snow was blowing around but didn’t seem to be sticking to the roads.  My guy picked me up and we traveled down the interstate to Cincinnati to see the customers we had planned to visit.  The further we went the faster the snow started to come down.  The sixty minute drive turned into an hour and a half trip.  The snow was piling up and we were afraid we were not going to get to the appointments we had made, and were worried that the places we were going might be closed due to the weather when we got there.  Well, we got to the two places we needed to visit, did what we had to do, and then began the trek back to Dayton.  We had to travel a slightly different route back to Dayton, and the route we took added a few miles to the trip, but it was a judicious decision.  The weather had worsened and it took us nearly three and a half hours to get back to Dayton.  The interstate we had used earlier from Dayton to Cincy was closed due to an accident.  What a day!!!

Here’s where the fun starts: I was supposed to stay two nights in the Dayton area and return home on Thursday (today).  We had plans to go back to Cincinnati to see people at a couple of Cincinnati’s finest public schools.  The inclement weather wreaked havoc with our plans: schools were to be closed on Wednesday in both Dayton and Cincinnati.  There would be nothing for me to do.  I could attempt to change my ticket or layover in the hotel and do little or nothing constructive – maybe e-mails.  I made the decision to stay and do nothing constructive.

My decision held until I woke up at 3:28am on Wednesday morning.  I lay there thinking about how little I could do in Dayton and much more I could do if I simply went home and back to my office.  I got up, fired up old Betsy (my damn laptop), called Air Tran and paid the $194.00 to change the ticket.  I justified the expense against the cost of the hotel and meals my company would have to pay if I stayed the extra night.  Same flight as I was to take on Thursday, a 7am, getting into BWI at 8:20am.  This long, boring story is about to get exciting.  Hang with me.

I called the front desk of the Hampton Inn and spoke with the desk clerk, a very nice lady named Toni.  Toni hooked me up with a ride.  She asked me what time I wanted to be picked up.  I asked her how far the airport was from the Hampton.  She said about eight miles.  I said 6am.  Wrong move!!!

The ride was a little late in getting to the hotel.  I arrived at the airport at about 6:35am and got in the back of a very long line at the Air Tran check in counter.  Man, I screwed this one up!  All along I knew the flight left at 7am, but somewhere in my little cerebral atrophying brain I began to fixate on the flight time as 7:30.  I approached the counter to get my boarding pass and the agent tells me the flight is closed and I cannot check in.  I panic.  But, I managed to talk him into checking me and told him I would carry on my bag.  It worked; he checked me in and told me I would be hard pressed to get on the plane because the door was about to close.  I maybe had five minutes to get through Security and on the plane.  All I had to do was get through security and run like hell to the gate.

Security went rather quickly, after I discarded my toiletries that where liquids in containers more than three ounces.  I grabbed my computer bag and suitcase and my sweater and my overcoat, and without putting anything back on or my computer in the bag, I hightailed it into the terminal running as fast as my old body could go.  I thought I was going to die.  The gate, as luck would have it was the last one in the terminal, about as far as one could go from the security checkpoint.  I was huffing and puffing when I heard my name called over the PA system very nicely saying something about my ass being grass if I didn’t get it to the gate in two minutes.  I made it with about eight tenths of a second to spare, but I thought I would keel over and pass out at any moment.

Here’s the part that seems so weird to me.  The Nancy and I are very fond of saying “there are no accidents.” This comes from the Millennium workshops we did (http://www.millennium3education.com), and we both subscribe to it.  Early in this piece I mentioned seeing someone with a bag just like mine.  Mine is not small, and I would have never guessed it would have fit in one of the overhead bins in an airplane, but I saw a guy put one just like mine in one.  Now, I never really notice what kind of bags anyone has.  It is of little interest or significance to me, but this time I did.  Carrying mine on was the only way I could have gotten on that plane.  Otherwise, this old boy would have been trapped in Dayton, and very unhappy about it, but only for three minutes or so.  Coincidence?  You decide, or you can just call me “Lucky.”

And that is all I have to say about that…