The Answer My Friend is Blogging in the Wind

Suggested Listening: "Come Fly With Me" as performed by Michael Buble off of his self titled album

Granted: I have never seen wind that strong. I mean this stuff was serious. One person tried to get into the airport terminal and it took him 3 minutes and two people to get the door open.

I was stuck in JFK for 12 hours. There’s not much to do in JFK…for 12 hours. I played some peggle and did some reading, and other than that, nothing much…except wait.

Thing is, everyone else airline wise had canceled flights that Saturday night. I don’t blame them. I was getting texts from Sarah Lawrence about how trees were down on campus and power was out. (Apparently a whole damn pole fell down too) Jetblue, Delta, American, United, and Southwest out of LaGuardia had all canceled.

Except terminal 4 airlines were steadfast in their desire to fly that night. El Al was still going to Tel Aviv, Asiana was still going to Seoul, LOT to Warsaw, KLM to Amsterdam, Aer Lingus to Dublin, Qatar to Abu Dhabi, Virgin Atlantic to London-Heathrow…

And Virgin America to Los Angeles and San Francisco. We were the party terminal at the airport that night.

INTERIOR: Party. Several airlines are standing around with various drinks. Jetblue enters with a folded copy of the Wall Street Journal under one arm and a coke in another.

JETBLUE
(in a nice dress shirt, sleeves rolled up)
Guys, I’m not fully sure I can make it out tonight, I think I’m gonna cash it in.

DELTA
(in a fine pressed suit, smoking, conservative haircut)
There’s no chance I could fly tonight

AMERICAN, UNITED, and SOUTHWEST all grunt in approval.

VIRGIN AMERICA
(wearing black cocktail dress, hair disheveled, drink in hand, visibly intoxicated)
Hhhhhhaaaaay guuuuys. So, OH MY GOD its wiiindy, right?! WOOO! But I still wanna Flllllllllyyyyyy! I can fly! I’m an aaaeerrroplaaneeeee (grins wide while stretching out her arms as if wings) wheeeeeeeee

Goes back to making out with AER LINGUS


You get my point. My airline was clearly the woo girl of the airlines. El Al, Asiana, all those international airlines were merely scoffing at American wind in the corner and remarking how us yanks have never seen wind like in Haifa, the Persian Gulf, …errr…Poland…and I think KLM was just off in the corner with Virgin Atlantic having a joint. My friend of mine, Alanna, who just flew El Al on a birthright trip pointed out that El Al wasn’t scared of the weather; it was the weather that was scared of El Al.

But my airline clearly was blitzed on a bit too many vodka-red bulls to think they could fly that night. My flight was supposed to leave at 4, which was delayed to 6 which then was “attention passengers on flight 411 to Los Angeles and flight 25 to San Francisco we have some updates for you…”

My plane was refueling on an airbase in upstate New York. San Francisco’s bird was in Philadelphia. At 8 my flight was still in upstate new york and the SFO flight was in DC. At 10 the SFO plane was on its way and in a holding pattern, our plane was STILL at the base.

SFO’s flight got out at 11 30 pm or so. I finally got on my flight at 3 am. (12 hours = 2 pm to 3 am with daylight savings time taken into account)

I don’t have much of a reason to complain, as this article details what happened on the flight I was supposed to get on.

Well now I’m home and covered in cats. They have a tendency to try and push me off my bed, or at least re arrange me so that they can sleep with me. It doesn’t really work and I largely just end up twisted in knots and a bit too warm. This break has consisted of:

Working on resumes
Working on conference work
Working on lines
Food poisoning on St Patrick’s Day (hence…no real stories from then. Big thanks to Cori and Frannie for taking care of me though. It was pretty impressive what my stomach was doing to me) (by the way, start your shenanigans at least before 9 pm anywhere for st pats. Also no having ice cream before your celebrations)
Petting animals.

Sadie has learned a new…trick. My dad is tremendously focused on trying to get her to stay out of the kitchen, which hasn’t been working. She does, however, gently step out of the kitchen now whenever he says, “get out!” … then she walks back in when he turns his back.

DAD
Get out!

(Sadie exits the kitchen and sits at the door)

(beat)

(the sound of dog steps behind dad is heard)

SADIE
I did it! I got out of the kitchen! I get a cookie now

DAD
NO! Bad dog!

SADIE
I’m sitting. (wags tail)

She looks so pleased to get out of the kitchen but doesn’t exactly get the premise of stay out. She’s still good. Still sleeps by my bed when the parents are out of the house. Guarding me or something. More than I can say about the cats which just try to take over the bed.


Sadie says hi

--me


VIRGIN AMERICA

WOOOOOO!