traveling adventure #493204

My adventure began at the airport in Des Moines, IA sometime around 11am on Saturday. James, on the phone with me, told me that my connection from Chicago to DC was canceled. As this came as no surprise to me, I immediately texted all the people I could think of that I knew that lived in Chicago, looking for somewhere to spend the night. While doing so, I went up to the counter to get on the next available flight on Sunday. The woman at the counter told me she could get me on a 12pm flight for Sunday. Life was good.

On the plane, I took my seat in the last row right in front of the lavatory. I learned very quickly that I could hear, very distinctly, everything going on in the restroom each time someone used it. Thankfully, after the flight attendant said her whole spiel, including something about a "lap-child", I passed out until we arrived in Chicago. In Chicago I got a text back from Jake, telling me I could crash at his place.

After Jake picked me up and we dropped my stuff off at his house where I met his family, we went to Whole foods and grabbed a pizza and some beers. I love Chicago beers, by the way-- or at least, their quirky labels. After watching the end of Gomorrah, we showered and then headed out to the bars with a few of his buddies. We got back home sometime around four and woke back up at ten.

After he dropped me off at the airport, I found out, of course, that my flight was delayed. Around this time, I learned that it had snowed a little more than twenty-two inches in DC. While waiting for our flight to arrive, the woman at the counter made me check in my backpacking back pack. I was pissed and confused, as this has never in all the times I've traveled with it. With no other choice, though, I coughed up twenty bucks.

On the plane, I sat between two people. A tired looking lady on my left and a man that struck me immediately as awkward, on my right. Once again, I immediately fell asleep after we took off. There was a man behind us that kept blowing his nose like a blow horn. Each time he did, both the lady next to me and I woke up. Each time I woke up, I found the guy on my right staring at me. At first, I assumed he was just looking out the window. Eventually, I noticed that the window was not open. His eyes also never diverted each time I turned to meet his gaze. Not wanting to make the rest of the flight even more awkward by calling him out, and also having grown rather complacent from this entire journey, I just ignored the creepy man and went back to sleep each time.

When we landed in DC, the pilot informed us that all the gates were full and we would have to wait on the tarmak. As this was not a novel experience for me, especially when flying with AA, I pulled out the magazine and started to do a crossword puzzle. The pilot then announced it would take up to one hour in order for us to get a gate. Many of the passengers started to flip a shit. Someone threw out the word 'incompetence' while others said similar comments along that line, as if the airlines had control over the backup caused by the weather. I started to chat with creepy man and sleepy woman who turned out to be decent conversationists. Creepy man played band in college and sleepy woman just got engaged.

Eventually, we got off the plane. After retrieving my backpack from baggage claim, I found out that the metro station was closed. Or at least, all above-ground stations were closed and the one at DCA is above ground. I went outside to find a taxi, only to find a line of over fifty people with the same idea. After standing around for a while, I got to chatting with the man in front of me, who apparently was also from Potomac. He was from the Village, which is tops five or ten minutes from my house. We decided to share a taxi. The man in charge of coordinating taxis overheard us and told us to follow him. From the back of the line, we walked to the front, where the coordinating guy gestured at a large shuttle. This is not what either one of us had expected, but neither one of us wanted to go stand back in the line of now maybe seventy people for a private taxi. The coordinator man told us this was the Maryland shuttle. We hopped on and I got immediate deja vu of a njiangjia/sept place*. There were 10 other people already sitting on the shuttle. After we started moving, we learned that the shuttle was going to both DC and Maryland.

After dropping off all the DC people, there were four people left in the car: me, the driver, and two other gentlemen. The original Potomac-Village man had dipped earlier in DC, opting to live in a hotel and then hop on a four a.m. Amtrak to get to his business meeting in NYC. After talking a bit, us three remaining passengers learned that we all lived in a straight line in the Potomac/Bethesda/Rockville area.

The driver decided to drop me off first. As we turned off Tuckerman, I told the driver he could just drop me off at the beginning of my street because my street clearly was not plowed. He said that was not necessary and started to drive up my street. He almost made it to my house, but got stuck maybe 200 feet away. After the driver tried backing up, pulling forward, and such, with little to no improvement, we got out of the shuttle and started to push. We managed to get the shuttle going a bit, but only into thicker snow. By this time, I assume my father had seen our struggle as he walked up to us with three shovels. We started to shovel around the shuttle. After maybe thirty more minutes of shoveling and pushing, we finally got the shuttle out and on its way.

The next morning, I woke up to find that my father had not gone to work. Apparently, the pipes of one of the houses on my street, specifically a house towards the entrance of the street, exploded. As a result of this, no one could drive in or out of our street. Thankfully for both the family and for me, it was fixed (I think, or at least enough to clear up the street). As my traveling woes came to an end, I went directly to work at PF Changs.

*refresher: a njiangjia is a not-governmentally recognized (but not really considered illegal) bus stuffed to capacity with people. a sept-place, also stuffed to capacity (but only with seven people), stops off at certain locations for its occupants.