Saturday a booming snow storm was tearing through the upper Midwest. I had been planning for weeks to pick up Dorota from Poland and get her to the hotel for the meeting of the Global Volunteers country managers. Getting out of Chicago for the last hour of the flight (a United conenction) from Warsaw is chancy on a good day; in the midst of wide spread snow storm, I didn't think I'd be acting pessimistic to think things would probably go wrong.
I could follow Dorota's flight from Warsaw on LOT and it touched down exactly on time. However, I could also see on United's web site that her connecting flight had already been cancelled. About one hour later she called to say she had in hand a boarding pass for the 8 PM flight. She called back another hour later to say the 8 PM flight had been bumped back to 9:00ish. I told her not to worry; I could follow what was being done about this flight on the Internet.
The time kept bumping back and back. When I saw departure at 10:51 I decided to start getting ready for the trip to the airport. Walked out the door to see a wonderful sight -- my snow service cleaning the driveway. By the time I waited a bit for the driveway shoveling and then drove carefully to the airport it was about 11:30. I walked around and around the baggage area and couldn't find a monitor that would tell me anything about United flights. Walked over to the United lost luggage service and got the news -- the flight was still on the ground in Chicago.
I finished off the last 100 pages of a book. Decided to carry that and the coffee mug back to the car so my hands would be more free to help whenever Dorota got there. After a stop at the car, for entertainment I took the tram to the Blue Terminal and then walked to the light rail station and walked all around the area of the light rail station for both entertainment and exercise.
By now it seemed like finding a restroom would be a good idea, but the trick turned out to be finding one that wasn't presently closed for cleaning. Sat down in front of a CNN monitor while I waited.
An African-born man came along pushing a cart piled with luggage. He sat down with a great sigh. I asked "Long day?" He turned to me and said, "Are you married?" In Minnesota that seems like a too direct question from a stranger. He goes on to tell me he was on his way to Ghana to be married. Within the past 24 hours he had called the woman in question at 2 AM her time in Ghana and a man answered the phone, and wouldn't explain who he was and why he was there. After several repeated phone calls, he finally speaks to the woman who tells him she "has a headache and can't talk." He wanted to know if was a good idea to get married when one can't trust the person before marriage. As I tell my students, one often gets into a counseling situation without ever seeing that the situation is coming!
I offered the opinion that lack of trust didn't seem like a good basis for a marriage. He wanted to know what to tell his brothers and sisters. I told him I didn't know enough about the Ghanian culture to have any answers for that. Being a good public health nurse I offered the opinion that in addition to the trust issues, there might be some health issues of concern in this situation, too, from "unfaithfulness," unfaithfulness being the man's word for what might be happening.
He started to talk about not making the trip. I asked him what would be the worst outcome of not traveling now -- having to pay some money to have the tickets changed? After a bit more talking he decided to go back and home and make the trip when he had "peace of mind."
Now where's the plane? By the this time the two people working in the United luggage office and I were friends. They wanted this plane to come as badly as I did because they couldn't go home until they had serviced this flight. Dorota now holds the record. I came home once on this 8 PM flight with a departure time of 12:11 AM. Dorota's new record is departure on a 8 PM flight at 12:45 AM! She arrived a bit before 2 AM, and thankfully we had a uneventful trip driving-wise to the hotel. I got home at 3:30. It's been a long time since I was out wandering around at 3:30 AM! If it had been summer, the sun would have been starting to come up! Feeling gratitude that while the airlines and the snow storm were a BIG inconvenience, everyone is where they belong safely.
And I'm betting some woman in Ghana just lost her meal-ticket to America!
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