Kyril's Journal -- November 30, 2004

A Mercury Retrograde Flight

Tuesday November 30, 2004

Because of Faol’s new schedule I am flying later to arrive after the end of his shift. That leaves me most of the day to get ready. He called in the morning and I was glad to hear from him as I was feeling anxious. Before this I got up and left pretty quickly. I felt antsy. It helped to talk with him.

We left early because I was concerned about rush hour traffic. When I got to the gate it turned out my flight was delayed about 20 min. Then 30 min. But they said I would still make my connecting flight in Chicago because it had been delayed by 40 min. But because of the delay something like half the people were redirected to other connecting cities. Then we boarded and the pilot told us we were going to sit there for an hour because weather was really bad. I kept hoping that my connecting flight would be delayed longer. The plane I was on was little with 1 seat then a narrow aisle and 2 more seats.

When we got in at O’hare I chcecked on my connecting flight and it was supposed to leave in 15 min. This meant that boarding would be over and they probably would not let me on the plane but I hoped that it was still delayed a bit longer so I dashed off as fast as I could. It only took me 6 min. to get to the gate and I was quite out of breath having alternated between walking quickly and actually running. The information board still said the flight was leaving. But the waiting area was filled with people so I went up and asked. Sure enough it had been delayed and was delayed for another half hour. Yay! I made the connecting flight. I tried to call Faol and Tom to let them know of the change and time I would get to L.A. but for some reason the calls kept failing. I was very annoyed that the cell phone wouldn’t complete a call. Others around were using their cell phones but mine wouldn’t work.

The flight was quite full. I dozed most of the way as I was quite tired. When we landed and taxied they told us we could use our cell phones and I called Faol. I thought potentially he might have checked on the flight and would be there but I had left him a message from Madison telling him that they were trying to set up back up flights for us if we missed our connecting flights so knew that he might still be waiting to hear. He answered the phone and headed right out to get me. It took him about 40 min. but 20 of that we were taxing and getting off the flight. He told me that he got in bed fully dressed so that he would be able to head out quickly when I called:)

I was pretty tired when we got in but we stopped at the Pacific Dining Car to feed me since I had not eaten since lunch. I had the eggs sardou and he had garlic mashed potatoes and asparagus with hollandaise sauce. We shared. Yum!