Ticks on a Plane

Longest... day... ever.

My day started somewhat early (6:30am) and deceptively smoothly in Cheyenne. After some last-minute packing and some breakfast, I caught the 8:30am shuttle to the Denver airport and arrived not long after 10:30am. The security lines were short, and I went right through with plenty of time to catch my 12:20pm flight to Chicago (via Des Moines). My plan from there was to arrive in Chicago at 4:50pm, catch the 6:30pm shuttle into Champaign and arrive 10-ish at night. A long day, to be sure, but not unreasonable. Until my evil plans were foiled by The Tick...



At the gate in Denver, someone found a tick (or ticks) (apparently it was "between 1 and 3 ticks" according to the news report) on the plane and rather than wait to finish cleaning that plane, they decided to use another plane. Unfortunately they had to fly this plane in from Seattle, which wouldn't arrive for another hour or so, giving us a 3:15pm flight. So I called the shuttle in Illinois and told them I was going to miss the 6:30pm shuttle. They put me on the 8:00pm. No problem.

About this time I realized that I had forgotten to grab my car key. I'm still not sure where it is. I think it's in Wyoming. I remember putting it on a table or a dresser in clear view so that I would remember to pick it up again before I left. It didn't work. So I called Sis. Shepard and she graciously offered to come pick me up whenever I arrived.

Then a lovely lightning storm hit. It was bad enough that they had to divert some flights to different airports for a couple of hours. The new delay was going to put us in Chicago at 9:00pm. The only shuttle to Champaign after that was at midnight, so I went to the customer service counter to see if I could get an earlier/direct flight to Chicago. Because of the storm, there was already a long line of people trying to work out new connecting flights. For some inexplicable reason, there was only one ticket agent to help out, so progress was very slow. I stood in line for at least half an hour before some other agents finally came to get the line moving.

Fortunately the agent was very cheerful and helpful when I got to the front of the line. She put me on a direct flight to Chicago, arriving at 8:50pm. This of course would miss my 8:00pm shuttle reservation and would be a tight squeeze to catch the 9:00pm ride, so I called the shuttle office again and postponed my reservation again. The girl there was also helpful and assured me that she would get me on that 9:00 shuttle.

This was obviously going to put me in Champaign much later than I had expected, so once again I called Sis. Shepard. Once again she assured me that she would come pick me up regardless of what time I arrived.

Well, unfortunately the flight to Chicago was delayed coming in (due to the aforementioned storm) and for some reason they didn't have a full flight crew. This caused another minor delay, and we finally arrived in Chicago around 9:05pm. The shuttle had apparently just barely left at this point but when I called the shuttle office, the operator said there were a bunch of other people at O'Hare also waiting for the shuttle, so she was going to send the driver from the Midway airport across town to pick us up. He was scheduled to arrive at 10:15. My luggage did not make it, however; it stayed on the original flight through Des Moines. So after finishing with the shuttle, I asked the luggage agent if she could send my bag on to Champaign. She said she could put it on a flight to Champaign and I could go pick it up at the airport. Not the most convenient solution, but by then I just wanted to get to bed.

As we waited for the shuttle driver, one of the passengers (an old lady) fainted and had to be carried inside and examined by the EMTs. Meanwhile, the driver from the Midway airport finally arrived around 10:35pm with a van that was clearly not large enough to carry all of us. (I was also confused to no end when he also started collecting travel vouchers from the other passengers, which they had never done before. Never did figure out what that was all about.) He did tell me and one or two of the other passengers in that group that there was another shuttle driver just "right behind him." Ooooookay. We all waited as the EMTs finished examining the lady, and by around 10:50pm they got ready to go. All this time, no sign of this supposed driver "right behind him." As they left, the driver said the next guy would be arriving at midnight. "Right behind" apparently can be used to describe someone who is still an hour away. Which, you may recall, was their regular pick-up time that I was trying to avoid. Not to mention, it was going to cost me an extra $10. But it looked like my choice was between that and shelling out some money for a hotel room.

I called the shuttle company once again to make sure I would indeed have a reservation on the midnight bus, and it was a different person that answered the phone. When she asked when my reservation was supposed to be, I told her it had been postponed twice already, so it was either 8:00pm or 9:00pm. She couldn't find it in either slot, she found it in the original 6:30pm slot. Left hand, meet right hand, I'm sure you two have a lot to talk about...

And since I was going to end up waiting at the airport another hour anyway, I went back to the baggage claim to see if my luggage had arrived and if I could cancel the request to put it on a flight to Champaign. It took me a while to describe what was going on, and that no I wasn't trying to find my luggage that just got put on carousel #4. But eventually I got my bag and returned to the bus stop for another hour-long wait. Finally things started to go smoothly again-- but only because I happened to have a 10-dollar bill with me. (The driver needed exact change.)

The nice thing about traveling that time of night is no traffic jams. We had a smooth 3-hour drive back to Champaign, including a drive across Chicago to stop at the Midway airport. It wasn't very good sleeping, though, unless you happen to like sleeping while being shaken awake every 2 seconds or so. Sis. Shepard was kind enough to come pick me up at the bus terminal at 3:00am, and my long day ended at 3:45am or so.

Too bad Samuel Jackson wasn't around...



PS: I thought the title of this blog entry was pretty original. A google search on the phrase shows otherwise; however, at least every link it returned was about this flight.