What a Long Strange Trip It's Been

Just over 52 hours after starting my trip from NYC back to Charlotte, I walked in through my front door. Mary had the comfort food ready for the oven and a bottle of prosecco at the ready. A happy thing to see as I began my collapse into the rest of the evening.

When I last wrote about my trip it was Thursday evening, and I was sitting in the airport bar in the JetBlue terminal at JFK. About an hour and a half later, I found out that my delayed flight was finally canceled. I had no luck getting a room at any of the airport hotels, but Mary had better luck on one of the internets, and found me a room at the LaGuardia airport Marriott, which was thankfully only a 20 minute cab ride away. Of course, the wait in line at the cab stand about froze me solid — the wind chill must have put the temperature down close to zero. Lucky for me, I had packed a pair of gloves and a hat; unlucky for me, I had lost the gloves earlier that day.

I finally get through to JetBlue about 2am, and I'm told that they can get me on a flight on Monday, or I can cancel and get a refund. "Uh, I'll call back later." I see a few flights to Charlotte still on Travelocity, but I need to sleep now. Lights out, crash.

I decide to forgo a trip back to JFK for what's most likely a futile attempt to fly standby on the two Charlotte flights that morning, so I hop back on Travelocity and find that the Charlotte flights are gone, but I can get to Columbia, SC that evening, which is only 90 miles away and has father-powered transportation options. Of course, I can't find a way to actually purchase this ticket. So over to Expedia — they don't even show the flight. Over to Delta's site — they don't show availability for the flights that Travelocity shows, either. Crap.

I call Mary at work to see if she can find a way to get a ticket on one of the Travelocity flights. Nope, but working together we finally come up with a plan. Amtrak to BWI on Friday, overnight at the airport Hilton, and a direct flight from BWI to Charlotte Saturday afternoon. Lots of stuff has to go right for all this to work, but that's the fastest way home for me we can find.

Long story short, it all worked, except for the flight being 45 minutes late. A delay like on most trips would have me seething, but now it's trivial. As a bonus, I get the cabbie whose not afraid to speed like crazy getting me home from the airport.

So, morals of the story: 1) Really try hard to stop your company from flying you into the middle of a giant winter storm. 2) Don't hurry up to fly JetBlue — they have some work to do first. 3) It's good to pack an extra day of clothes; it would be better to pack two day's worth.