There are those days, and then, there are those days when everything goes right. So why is it that I have not seen one of those days for a while?
I was to meet the technician in Minneapolis to do some training seminars with the local contractors. Everything went well until, on my way to the airport, I had a flat tire. I take very good care of my vehicles, regardless of their age, so the flat tire really surprised me. I was on a stretch of highway where big trucks travel at a surprisingly fast speed, so my hair was a total disaster the moment I opened the car door. A nice young man stopped to help, and we both changed the tire, then I proceeded to the airport.
At the airport, I parked the car, got the suitcases, gathered the coat, purse, carry-on and phone, and proceeded to get my seat assignment. Waited in line, took my I.D. out for perusal by the attendant, and waited some more.
My turn eventually came up and then I realized my flight had been cancelled due to bad weather. Sorry, is all they can say. All these rushing around to get to the airport on time, were for naught. What are my alternatives? To wait.
The weather outside is really bad, and getting worse. The counter clerk rounded us up and asked if we minded taking a bus to the neighboring airport since they have longer runways and larger airplanes; we all agreed to ride the 90 miles to the airport. However, the bus driver was having nothing to do with it; he declined to drive us. So we waited.
We can’t go home as departure could be immediate, so we waited some more. The clerk kept cancelling the flights as they were appearing on the monitor. No flights were coming in, so we had no aircraft to fly us out. At this point I should have cancelled all my appointments and go back home, but the weather was not allowing any driving on the highway, so at least I felt safe inside the airport.
After seven hours of waiting, the clerk put us up at the nearby hotel, with promises to get us out first thing the next morning. By this time, all my fellow passengers and I have called and cancelled all our appointments for the next day. And we waited.
The next morning, first flight out at 6:30 a.m. and away we go without consideration to the weather at the other end. When the pilot is near the airport and gets ready to descend, he tells us the visibility is near zero, we can approach, but we will probably not be able to land. So we waited, as he circled over the airport and then decided to take us to a neighboring airport in order to re-fuel. Has anybody noticed that is about 24 hours and we are still not at our destination? Minneapolis is not in another galaxy, it’s not far from here.
So here we are, deplaned, in a strange city, not nearly where we want to be. By this time, the people at the other end of my trip are no longer waiting for me, as they have their own problems with weather. The technician has been holed up in the hotel room for 48 hours and he is waiting for me to arrive. I kept him occupied with phone calls and updates about my arrival so many times now, he is absolutely convinced I am lying.
Eventually, we find our way to Minneapolis, arrange transportation, hotels, find my technical man and we go to work.
We arrive at the first call to find the materials needed for the seminar had not been delivered due to weather related delays. We arrange for replacements, organize the meetings, the food and the refreshments, and waited.
Eventually, all materials arrived at the site, we organized our seminar and waited for the people to arrive; and waited some more.