Wednesday, November 14, 2007

ceci n'est pas MDW

My first clue should have been the assigned gate number: A-15. Huh. I thought Northwest flew out of the E-gates? Weird. But I didn't bother to glance at it until I was already hoofing it across the breezeway, barely looked at it when I checked in online and printed it out blurry eyed at 4.30AM.

Confident that it would sort itself out (these things always do -- the first rule of travel being, always, DON'T PANIC) I kept hoofing it, and found my spot in the security line. Blogged a little. Took a snapshot. Checked my boarding pass because that gate thing was just so strange... *GASP*. Loud enough that the fellow in front of me turned around.

My boarding pass read Midway. I was standing in line at O'Hare.

Start walking. Back on the train. Dial the travelagency guys. "Due to travel delays on the East Coast..." Sit on hold. Find my car. Pull out a map -- how do I get to Midway from here? Can I make it in 15 minutes? Hmmm -- unlikely. Agent picks up. I tell him what a dork I am. What I've done. He doesn't laugh. Oh come *on* guy -- laugh with me. Don't make me stand out here all alone in my dorkiness.

Next flight out of O'Hare: 5 minutes. No way I'll make it. Next flight out of Midway: 1 hr. Hmmm: traffic's still a problem. Flight out of O'Hare in 2 hrs? I'll take it.

Call my colleague and tell him what a dork I am; how we'll have to start our meeting 2 hours late.

Head back to security. Text everyone who might care about what a dork I am -- because the one thing dorkiness needs, must have, really, to take the edge off -- is company.

No reply. It's early yet. Maybe they just aren't up. Or maybe they agree that you're a huge dork and just don't know how to tell you.

Posting by cameraphone from O'Hare. Even though I oughta be posting from Midway.

8 comments:

Lolabola* said...

well it did give you the chance to smell the rental car. I find that the ass smell pops up in the weirdest places. It's like a jolt to reality when it does.

Kind of like when you go to the wrong airport....at least you had the right day and didn't yell at the attendant before you realized it was your own error ;)

I, Rodius said...

Heh heh. Dork.

There you go. Seemed like you were practically begging for somebody to call you a dork.

Another reason I'm glad I don't live in a giant city. That seems like exactly the kind of thing I'd do all the time. 'Cause I'm a dork.

suttonhoo said...

god bless you, rodius -- I needed that. ;)

better now.

(ah.)

Unknown said...

suttonhoo, don't feel bad. i have missed plenty of flights and trains but my top was coming back from italy and greece and missing not only my stop in lausanne, switzerland but missing the entire country altogether. when i looked out the window, there were rolling hills. next stop; dijon, france.

suttonhoo said...

lol -- I love it, narthex! I have a girlfriend who lost her whole hotel in Rome once -- including all her luggage -- and never found it again.

I have to admit, as petulant as I may sound in this post, the whole thing cracked me up to no end. I'm still laughing about it. And it helps that everything worked out fine -- the meeting didn't suffer for lost time -- we actually wrapped early. And the fresh ticket wasn't too ungodly expensive.

SUCH a great lesson in how we (I) can get into a groove and fail to pay attention to important details...

anniemcq said...

What amazes me, with the amount of traveling that you do, is that it hasn't happened before. That's why I could never be a business traveller - I'd be landing in unexpected cities once a week.

p2wy said...

Reminds me of the time I missed my flight from ORD *while sitting at the gate*... which happened to be the last flight out that night.

Good times, dork ;-)

suttonhoo said...

*this* is why I blog -- because shared stories like this are *so* comforting.

too funny, p2. (I actually almost managed to do that once too -- *almost*.)

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