To Indiana!

To Indiana!

I wasn't planning to go to Indiana for the holidays this year. I had been there the last two years (once by choice, once by evacuation) and I was going to spend this Christmas at home in New Orleans. Since my sister has moved to California it looked like neither one of us was going to be there for the holiday. Then my sister decided that she was going to go so I opted to make the trek.

I left on the 21st which was destined to be a busy day in the skies being so close to the holidays. I checked in to the airport at 10:30 for a flight that left at 11:30. When I got to the gate they were already making the announcement that our flight was going to be delayed by 45 minutes. No problem, I just settled in with a few magazines and waited patiently. Visibility was low at O'Hare, my connecting city and it was slowing traffic across the country. Denver airport was shut down from snow and the visibility problem was also affecting San Fransisco. Air traffic across the country was massively slowed down. A flight from St. Louis to New Orleans had been forced to make an unexpected landing in Little Rock to fix a mechanical problem and that wasn't helping the flow. We finally did board the plane about 12:30 without much grumbling from the masses. Then they hit us with the real issue. We didn't have clearance to take off from Chicago but we had to pull away from the gate to make way for another incoming flight. The flight attendant said "We're going to have to sit on the tarmac -for a little while-" Okay, a little while. In my mind a little while is 45 minutes, maybe even an hour. A little while is not three hours which is precisely how long we sat there with nothing to do. I tried to nap but every 20 minutes they came over the intercom to tell us that nothing had changed and we still weren't going to be able to take off until about 3 pm. At last we were in the air heading north and arrived in Chicago just before 6 pm, 3 1/2 hours late. Knowing that there were limited flights out that night I immediately went to the gate for the next plane leaving for Indy. There had been five more flights after 1:30 pm which was when my flight was supposed to leave. I had already missed two of them, the next one was cancelled and the last two were sold out. I managed to get on stand-by for the last flight. I called a friend in Indy and asked him to get online and check to see if there were any flights on other airlines that I could get a guaranteed seat. There was one on United so my friend bought it and I headed off to the gate. For those unfamiliar with O'hare International, it's a fairly large place. I arrived (see map)at concourse G. The flight on United was in concourse C. After hoofing it all the way over there I couldn't find the flight number on the departure board. Unfortunately there had been an error in communication and the flight I was booked on was for another day. Now I'm sweating, frustrated and worried that I am going to be one of those sad souls sleeping in an airport. In addition to all this fun, my cell phone was dying. I had been on it all day either by text or updating folks on my arrival (or non-arrival) times. I stopped at Brookstone for an emergency phone charger (at the airport price of 25 dollars) and took one last shot at getting out of Chicago that night. I called the car rental company with whom I had a reservation in Indy. At that point I was considering trying to rent a car in Chicago and drive to Indy which would have taken about four hours. Much to my surprise there were no cars available in Chicago. My fear then was that I would be unable to get a car in Indy when I arrived because it would be too late or they would be out of cars. Now I am not going to make any nasty comments about the person who I was talking too, I'm not. Okay I am. Seriously, if Hadji could have taken the piece of beef jerky or the slurpy straw out of his mouth long enough to have learned more than a handful of words in english I might not have lost my temper. If Hadji had been able to even understand more than a handful of words in english I might not have been so upset. The stress of the day hit maximum overload when Hadji told me that there were still cars available in Indianapolis but that my reservation had expired. I could still get a car if I was willing to pay 650 dollars. To say that my head nearly exploded would be an understatement. I'm sure it wasn't a pretty picture, my red face screaming into a phone with an AA battery pack charger hanging down, sweat pouring, shirt sticking to my back, eyes blurry from drifting in and out of sleep while wearing my contacts. Hot. Eventually I hung up on Hadji and began the trek back to my original concourse. My disheveled appearance must have frightened the ticket agent at the gate because she looked a bit concerned when I slung my bag and coat up on the counter. Perhaps it was my now blood shot eyes or that my hair most likely resembled the wild man of borneo. As my flight began to board she looked at me more and more nervously as those around me were moved from the stand-by flight to actually getting a seat. The two large hand holding lesbians snared two seats (when three might have been more appropriate) as did the tiny Asian woman in an even tinier skirt (going back to my belief that the majority of Asian women in this country shop at gap kids.) Finally I heard my name and I'm not sure who was more relieved, the ticket agent or me. It was 9:15, six and a half hours after I was supposed to have arrived in Indianapolis.

When I got to the airport in Indy my Uncle was there waiting for me. The original plan was for me to get into town early in the afternoon, pick up my car, drop off my stuff at my moms, meet some friends downtown for dinner and then be back at the airport to pick up my sister at 11:30. Since we didn't have any guarantee that I was going to be able to rent a car in Indy or even beat my sister there my Uncle came out to see if we needed to be picked up. He and I headed for the baggage claim but I had to stop first at the rental car counter. As I walked up to the desk a perky young lady said "Hi, can I help you?" She managed to maintain her smile even as I said "You better hope so!" As it turns out Hadji was not only a bumbling english speaker but he didn't know what the hell he was talking about. My new best friend at the rental desk told me that it's company policy to hold reservations for 24 hours, especially when it's a travel day like that one when flights around the country are running late. I managed to get a car and be back in the airport in time to pick up my sister. We headed downtown for a quick bit (okay drink) at the restaurant we both used to work at and then to G-wood to our mothers house.

The rest of the trip was rather uneventful. It was my sisters first trip back to Indy since she moved to LA so she was dealing with some different emotions. My mother duped me into having my photo taken once again (I detest doing this) and I was able to spend some time with friends downtown. Christmas Eve night my mothers family all went out to dinner to a chain restaurant called Smokey Bones. We were enjoying our dinner when a large family trundled in and sat next to our table. When I say large I mean that here were several of them and that they were all extremely large. Big. Fat. Obese. HUGE. It was hard to tell who was the largest one of them. The grandmother was a hearty contestant for the title, leaning her bulk on a cane and sporting a lot of stretchy polyester looking garb. The highlight of her outfit was a beanie type cap pulled down low with only a few strands of white hair peeking out from underneath. I really think that her son was the biggest. He was the kind of guy you see being weighed at a grain elevator. There were a couple of babies in carriers leaving me to question the sheer physical possibility of these people getting into a position that could lead to procreation. In addition to their bulk was the fact that they were extremely loud. Seeing as how they were so large the restaurant had broken them up across three booths. Some lubrication and a shoe horn and they were all squeezed into place. They screamed back and forth across the tables at each other, the large son repeatedly making threats to punch his family members right in the face. The best moment came when sonny boy called out to anyone who was listening "Hey what should I get?" and my sister and I answered back unprompted and in unison "A muzzle".

Christmas came and went, I got a lot of nice presents like DVDs and books. Every year my grandmother tells someone that they are fat. This year it was my sisters turn. She wasn't pleased. I flew back to New Orleans the day after Christmas and thankfully my return was without incident.