I'm sure it's not actually just me, but it often feels like I'm incessantly the target of things not going as intended. And there are obviously many things in my life that don't go awry. It just so happens that the moments of stress and anxiety usurp those moments I'm my memory.
I started monitoring my public transportation timing and route to the airport yesterday. The 74 bus, walk one block, blue line to O'Hare. A one hour journey when I overestimated.
But then there was the bus stop where we lingered for eight minutes. And the crosswalk signal that I just missed, which delayed me the sixty seconds that could've gotten me on a train immediately. Despite the fact that blue line trains were coming every two to six minutes all morning, the next train wasn't arriving for ten. And then that train flew past: an express. Two more minutes later and fifteen minutes behind schedule, I boarded.
Thankfully I included a twenty minute buffer zone on top of my one hour pre-flight arrival. I made my way to Terminal 3 at as close to warp speed as possible, skipping traffic-jammed moving walkways and escalators, hoisting my suitcase up flights of stairs instead.
Hitting the self check-in kiosk exactly one hour before departure, I turned around to the security line and gaped. There were zero people lined up among the stanchions. For the first time ever, I waltzed right up to the TSA guy. In fact, I'm not confident in saying that I even went through security, it was over so quickly.
But, yes, that good karma would twist and turn several more times. Boarding occurred without any ado, my suitcase easily finding a space in my overhead bin. By 12:40pm, the plane doors still hadn't shut on our 12:25pm flight. That's when we learned that air traffic control had us logged as a 1:00pm take-off. Just sit tight another twenty minutes.
Then at 1:00pm another vague issue related to air traffic control was announced. Sit even tighter, now we're not taking off until 1:30pm. The flight itself was less than eventful, besides the woman behind me whose restless leg syndrome was rocking our whole row of seats. Oh, and the toddler two rows up who repeated the same indistinguishable phrase repeatedly while increasing his volume, as if he was practicing scales.
I started to feel relief coursing through my pent up body when the pilot announced our landing in fifteen minutes. He almost immediately reneged, getting back on the speaker to inform us that we'd actually be spending the next 20-30 minutes in a holding pattern.
So, just another routine trip in my life. At least my hotel room rate included a New York-style pie (a.k.a. pizza) bigger than the TV. Too bad I won't be around longer to enjoy the leftovers; I don't think they'd travel well.
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