My Travel Day

I guess it all started a few months ago when Tracy booked her plane ticket for Heath’s wedding weekend.  Since Tracy was in the wedding, she knew she would be coming in a couple days early.  And since we were paying for a plane ticket, we thought she should stay a few days after to see family and friends.
My schedule was a little more up in the air.  However, when plane ticket prices started to rise a few weeks after Tracy’s purchase, I decided to buy a ticket on the same schedule as she had, knowing that I could work out of the bank office in Durham for a couple days while in NC.

It wasn’t until a day or two before our trip that I realized I hadn’t exactly matched our itineraries.  Rather, I had booked my return flight for Tuesday at 6:40PM, while Tracy’s flight was Wednesday at 6:40PM.

All this is to explain why I had my suitcase packed yesterday morning when leaving Greensboro for Durham for the day.  When I got to Durham (where I was to work for the day), I went to grab my suitcase only to find that I hadn’t put my computer bag into the car.  It was still sitting next to the front door at Tracy’s parents’ house in Greensboro.  With my wallet inside.

After meeting Donna in Burlington around 10:30am, I thought I finally had my travel in order.  Little did I know, the chaos had only just begun.

With severe storms in the Triangle yesterday, I wasn’t surprised to get an email from Delta around 4:45 stating that my flight would be delayed in departure by a couple hours.  It did surprise me a couple minutes later when I got an updated email stating that the departure time was unchanged, but that arrival in NY would be severely delayed.  I assumed they just wanted everyone at the airport to wait it out, so I went.

Sure enough, my 6:40 flight was delayed significantly, and I was stuck waiting in the RDU terminal.  This waiting game was made a bit easier when I ran into great friend Catherine Whitehill who was herself delayed for a flight back to DC.  After chatting with her for a short while, I got to the gate in time to board my flight.  Our flight attendant told us “we will get you to NY tonight…it’s just a matter of what time.”

After another short delay, we pulled away from the gate and made our way towards the runway.  The pilot informed us we were in line for an 8:45 takeoff.  That is, until 8:41, when he came back on the speaker to let us know the wonderful news - LaGuardia was on a ground freeze and we were in line for a wait of at least an hour. 

More than halfway through our wait we pulled back to the gate to let off a passenger who wanted to try and make a different flight.  Five minutes later, we were all looking for different flights when we were told that our flight was now cancelled.

As I made my way to the ticket counter at Gate 10, a sly smile was already beginning to form.  I already knew what flight I was going to get on:

The 6:40PM flight on Wednesday - Tracy’s flight which I was supposed to have booked months ago!