"Airport 2011"

Sunday:
It has become abundantly clear that snow is on the way. It is being predicted that come Wednesday, the Detroit and the tri-county area will be buried in 12 to 18 inches of the white stuff. Wednesday is the day that Linda is suppose to return from Omaha. Looks like a dilemma in the making.

Monday:
I call Linda and advise her to reschedule her departure; either a day earlier or day later. She calls back and informs that she will be flying in this very night. I am to retrieve her at 10 pm at Metropolitan Airport. She gives me her flight info and I watch the Southwest web page to chart her whereabouts. She leaves Omaha after an hour and half delay. She has to change planes in Chicago. As close as I can tell, she lands having twenty minutes to make it from one gate to another. The Chicago-Detroit flight takes off after a fifteen minute delay. I leave the house at 9:30 pm. Metro Airport is about 45 minutes away; thirty odd miles. Driving there I get caught in a traffic jam due to an accident. As every driver well knows, it is our duty to slow down to a crawl and try to view as much carnage as possible. The more pain and destruction you can observe, the luckier you feel that you are not involved. The focal point of the misery did not contain any bloody victims, just squashed vehicles. My luck scale rested at 75 percent. Then the odds turned against me. My phone rang and it was Linda's daughter. I am now three or four miles from airport. Linda missed her flight out of Chicago; I don't have to pick her up. I am told that Linda will call and tell me when she'll be completing the last leg of her trip.

Tuesday:
Six o'clock in the morning my phone rings. It is Linda. She says she'll be leaving Chicago at 8:00 am. I check the web site and find her new flight. She will arrive at 10:10. I plan to leave the house at 9:30. By the time Linda deplanes and gets her luggage and leaves the airport, I should have just arrived. With my meticulous timing, neither one of us should have to wait on the other for more than one or two minutes. Right before leaving the house I check the web page again; Linda's flight is arriving early at 9:55. Out goes my plan to pit stop for a McDonald Egg McMuffin; there isn't the time. About halfway there the phone rings and once again its Linda's daughter. I fear another missed flight, but the call was to garner information from me; have I heard from her Mom? Why, yes, I am en route at this very moment. She was worried because she hadn't heard from her since the prior evening. Linda was suppose to call her from the hotel when she got a room. I repeat to her what Linda had told me, Linda had slept on a cot the airport supplied. She asks to have her Mom call her as soon as I get her. I finally arrive at arrivals. Linda is nowhere to be seen. I depart arrivals and circle the airport to arrive at arrivals a second time. This time I pull to the curb and wait. The time is 10:20. I am standing in the no standing zone. I do not desire to circle the airport again. I have one eye out for Linda, the other out for police. Luckily, Linda was the first to spot my illegally parked vehicle. As we drive home, Linda does not want to hear about my driving twice to the airport, (an exciting story that you can now verify as such) she is insistent on telling her tale of delayed departures, missing change-overs, sleeping in an airport, paying six dollars for a small fruit cup, running out of phone change and other assorted incidents. She didn't even give me a chance to tell her about the accident I passed on the expressway.

Anyway, Linda is back home and my life has resumed its regularly scheduled mayhem.