Snow Fortitude

Well, that was a flight. Probably second only to the Josh-cursed flight to Dallas back in 2006 that I wrote about here.

Let's start with getting out of bed at 4am. In a word, I'm too old for this shit. Verify that my 6:20 flight is still "on time"; the later 9am flight was cancelled last night in anticipation of a big Noreaster headed up the coast.

The good news is that the promised snow hasn't happened. The streets are wet with rain. The bad news is that it's just starting to turn over to snow, which pastes me pretty heavily as I walk two blocks to the nearest cab stand. I cover my head ineffectually with a local paper, mildly regretting my decision to leave my winter jacket at home this week.

Cab to the airport never exceeded 30 MPH. Most timid cabbie I've ever seen.

Get to airport, where my online check-in allows me to go straight to security. I'm quickly through and at the gate, where I meet my two coworkers, one of whom is cursed. It's dumping outside, and the snow is piling up, but we board the 757 on time at 6am.

I'm sitting next to an old woman who bathes in perfume. At least I'm not sick and not in the middle seat, as was the case last week.

We head out to get de-iced. If we take off, we'll be the last flight out. But they just closed the runway for plowing, which takes a half an hour. And in half an hour's time, we'll need to be de-iced a second time, so we're not going anywhere for an hour and a half.

Time passes.

Actually, the snow's coming down at a rate of two inches an hour. After the half an hour to clear the runway, there are two planes ahead of us in de-icing queue. De-icing each plane will take 20 minutes. By the time those two planes are de-iced, they'll have to shut the runway down again for another cleaning. See the cycle?

More time passes.

Three or four hours in, they decide to let people leave the plane. If you leave, you have to take all your belongings with you, and you cannot re-board. You also have to stay in the gate area, because the plane will depart on a moment's notice. There's no way I'm getting off this plane unless the flight's officially cancelled.

The guy in the seat behind one of my coworkers has a diabetic episode. Fortunately, they get him stabilized.

They get the passengers back on who had deplaned earlier. Are we getting ready to leave?

No. More time passes.

A stewardess comes on to explain that due to the chemical slush on the runway, the plane cannot take off at the planned weight. Everyone expects this to be the end: they're going to cancel the flight.

But no, what she says is like the punchline to a joke that's dragged on for too long. To reduce weight, they're going to take some of the bags off the plane and leave them in Boston! They have no idea how many bags or whose bags. Nor do they care. And, to be honest, neither do the passengers, as long as the plane takes off. Cue the sound of two hundred people laughing hysterically.

Last week, and earlier today, my coworkers teased me mercilessly for being able to fit everything I needed for a week into a medium-sized backpack that was my carry-on. Who's laughing now, huh? Huh?!?!

There's no way we're making our 1pm connection from San Juan to St. Thomas. My coworker uses his phone to book us on the 5pm.

Time passes.

About half a foot of snow has fallen, but we get de-iced again. In fact, we even taxi out to the runway. It looks a lot like Antarctica, actually. Before global warming.

I've been sitting in the same seat of this 757 for over six hours. It's past noon, but the 6:20am flight finally does it: we lift off! Maniacal applause breaks out as the wheels lose contact with the ground. Now we just have a four hour flight to endure. And the third time I've been on a flight showing "Ratatouille".

Time passes.

As we approach Puerto Rico, we realize that we'll be landing at about 5:30pm (Atlantic time zone). Our flight to St. Thomas is listed as leaving at 5:50. We have to hoof it, and if we don't make it, we'll be staying overnight in the cesspool that is San Juan. We run, and we catch the little commuter plane. Mind you, it's not as little as last week's Cessna 402, which is another story unto itself.

The half-hour flight went well enough, and we were almost giddy to finally land at St. Thomas around 7pm, five hours late and a mere 13 hours after I left home. My co-worker's bag, of course, never showed up, but he was well beyond caring by then. We were in St. Thomas and mere minutes away from food and drink, which was key, because my entire day's food intake had consisted of two vitamins, a small pack of Twizzlers, 8 oz. of water, and 24 oz. of orange juice.

Thankfully, we got our car, had hotel rooms waiting for us (unlike last week, which is again another story), and found a tolerable restaurant. And the warmth of a Virgin Islands evening erased much of the irritation caused by Boston's snow and the day-long travel misadventure.