I went back to Chicago this weekend for my grandmother’s 90th birthday. It was a quick trip, early flight on Saturday, and late flight back on Sunday. I didn’t want to take off a day of work and figured I could make it happen in 24 hours.
I got a bad feeling when I got to O’Hare Sunday night at 5pm. My 6pm flight was already delayed and we didn’t have an assigned gate yet. Just seeing a hold message where my gate number should have been on the departure big screen made me nervous.
We ended up taking off at 7:15pm and I was just excited to be in the air. 2 hours later I could see Raleigh from my window seat and the pilot announced we would be landing in 10 minutes. About 5 minutes after that a flight attendant with very little information made another announcement, “I am sorry to inform you that Raleigh’s airport has been shutdown due to fog issues so we are landing in Norfolk, Virginia instead.”
WHAT??? Please God, this is not happening to me again. Norfolk is about 3 hours away from Raleigh after which I would still have my 1hr 30min drive to Greenville. You can imagine how passengers on the plane reacted. At the time, we were given no other information. When we got off the plane, United ordered us to stay in the gate area, 10 minutes later we were still waiting. So, I decided to team up with 2 other travelers, rent a car, and road trip it back to Raleigh. We picked up a one-way vehicle for $160. I figured, it was a safer bet to get in a car right then rather than sit around waiting for United to figure something out for us. I called in sick for work at midnight, knowing there was no way I was going to be camera ready at 9am, my boss said she had everything covered and wished me good luck.
I was traveling with Carl and Molly. Carl was heading to Raleigh on business and also happened to be the Mayor of Mount Caroll, a small town in Illinois. He lives about 10 miles away from the high security prison President Obama wants to move the detainees from Guantanamo Bay to. Carl told me it would mean 800 new jobs for the area so he was all for it. Molly was a young chiropractor living in Raleigh and enjoying city life. She passed out in the back seat 10 minutes after we left and woke up when we got to Raleigh.
My new friends dropped me off at my car at 3am. I stopped at the Hilton to see how much a room would be for the night and decided not to pay $140 to sleep in a bed for 5 hours. I would just have to complete the last leg of this nightmare on my own. Little did I know I had one more obstacle ahead.
I ran out of gas at 4:15am, the red light went on, and I started to freak out since I was in the middle of no where, blinded by the fog. I got off at 3 exits, not a single gas station was open. So, I parked in front of a pump in Farmville, NC around 4:30am and curled up in the back seat of my car to wait for the station to open. At 6am I spent $47 on a full tank.
I got home at 6:30am and jumped under the covers. For the next 7 hours I dreamed about how fog had just ruined my life…lesson learned.
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