Flight Risk
“Time to get up, “ my husband D said , his voice roughened by sleep or the lack of it. I opened bleary eyes. It was 3:30 AM, the time D had determined we needed to rise in order to make our 6AM plane departure from SFO. I pushed myself out of bed and wove my way to the kitchen to start some coffee. My cell phone lay charging in its nest on the counter. “That’s got to go in my bag,” I thought, as I picked it up. Then I registered the message glaring from its yellow oval: “Your flight has been cancelled.”
Shock, amazement, distress. Our flight has been rebooked through Houston instead of Chicago, leaving at 10:50. What to do? Back to bed not a good option – too much adrenaline generated by the cancellation notice. Tried unsuccessfully to doze. Finally ate breakfast at 6:30, arrived airport at 9, to find a delay of another hour.
Flight delay. Delay. Delay. Finally a lovely first class seat in a new Dreamliner. We hover over Houston, which looks impossibly green below towering white clouds like the ghosts of Bryce Canyon hoodoos. We land. Our connection in Houston leaves in 20 minutes, no gate info provided. Mad search for departure info? Found – ugh! Terminal E, we are in A. Where is E? D is looking at the airport map he ripped from the flight magazine, while I flag down a jitney driver. “How do we get to Terminal E?” “Hop on” he replies, and off we go zig-zagging down the endless corridor, turning right here, left there. He stops. “Are we there yet?” No, change to another jitney. Our original savior continues left at the Y, we go right, then stop again with our gate in sight. We’ve made it. We are not even the last to get on the plane. And there is another delay in leaving, so we are even pretty confident that our luggage made it too. The afternoon of orienting ourselves to our hotel and surroundings is blown, the welcome champagne and a nice dinner ditto, but we are GOING TO GET THERE!
Allyson Johnson 