I know that’s quite a strong statement but it does not indicate how I feel about the city of Chicago. I’m writing this blog entry in the plane on the tarmac at LaGuardia airport in NYC. While sitting in the waiting area at the gate, they announced that we would soon be boarding the plane, then rolling away from the terminal and then proceed to sit on the tarmac for 1 hour. We needed to board the plane on time because the gate was going to be occupied by another plane. I’m hungry because the flight is late afternoon/early evening and I’m not going to get to the hotel until 8:30 at the earliest. I couldn’t eat anything at the airport because my coworker scheduled a conference call during the time after the security check and before boarding the plane. The reason for our forced delay is high winds at Chicago’s O’Hare airport, which has caused a lot of air traffic and subsequent groundings for planes that are intended for arrival O’Hare. I know it’s not Chicago’s fault for its high winds. Wait? Did I mention previously of the arctic winds that come off Lake Michigan? I have a terrible history with O’Hare. Reminisce with me please. I had to get to Milwaukee once via O’Hare, and it was snowing lightly all day. After my brief meeting in Milwaukee – trust me, I was not going to overnight it there – I had to fly to Phoenix via O’Hare. Upon arriving at the Milwaukee airport, my flight was cancelled because there was too much air traffic coming into O’Hare. Fast forward 4 hours later and I hopped on a flight to Phoenix via Dallas from Milwaukee. The best part of that trip was when I arrived into the warm dry air of Phoenix, having escaped the cold winter night of the Midwest. That’s not the worst O’Hare story. Flying back from LA from having spent a week there, I was heading into a snow storm in Chicago. Upon landing at O’Hare for my connecting flight, I soon found out that all fights were cancelled leaving Chicago. What’s worse is that when I arrived at 10pm, all of the airport hotels were completely sold out. Luckily, the sports bar in the Hilton was open and I ate dinner at the bar among many other stranded travelers. I was desperate to get back to NYC and get into my bed. I’m telling you, if you slept in it, you’d understand. I decided not to risk getting a hotel room in Chicago proper because I wanted to be at O’Hare when the gates opened up at 5am so I could get on a flight to NYC. It’s the only time I’ve slept at an airport and it is miserable because I slept sitting up with my head swiveling back and forth. I slept only half the time because I was scared of my luggage being stolen and I was also scared from oversleeping. Around 4:30am I awoke and decided to walk over to the ticket counter. A line of 100 people beat me by having lined up at 4am. Damn! This is what happens when there are a lot of desperate people. In the end, I couldn’t book a flight to NYC because they were canceling flights left and right because the storm was heading eastward to NYC. I ran to the gate that had a plane heading to Philly and by the grace of God, I got the last seat. Once I arrived in Philly, I took an Amtrak up to NYC. There are too many uncontrollable variables at O’Hare, in addition to being one of the busiest airports in the world. If you ever have a connecting flight cross country, I highly recommend making it through Las Vegas because if you get stuck there, you can make it an enjoyable delay. Trust me.
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