Faith

I went to the Dominican Republic for 8 days and then I came back and had Christmas and now I am housebound because of an ice storm. It's me and my 93 yr old grandma here. It took most of lunch on Christmas Eve to get my dad to understand that this was actually her 94th Christmas. Not even me saying, "ok, I'm 27, but let's count my Christmases-- 1981, 1982, 1983... see, 28!" convinced him. I come by my fear of math honestly, I guess.

On the way home from the DR I arrived at SDQ intending to go standby at 8:50 (my original flight left at 4:30pm.) The man at the counter squeezed me on to the 9:20 flight and told me to run. And then said it again for emphasis. I looked shifty and sweaty going through Dominican immigration/customs. I got to Miami at about 10:30am Miami-time (the DR is an hour later than that.) The SDQ man told me I would have to stand by in Miami for 2:55. By the time I cleared customs and immigration it was almost noon and I was sweaty and shaking. I think because of no food, so I have some chicken nuggets at Burger King, with lots of BBQ sauce for energy. Then I got myself on the standby list for the 11:55 flight which hadn't left. That flight was pushed back over and over until it finally left at 3, with me on it. The 2:55, a 4pm and my original flight at 7:30 had all been canceled.

I arrived in O'Hare to a fresh kind of hell. But one I wasn't really involved in... I was just there long enough to wait for the parking shuttle. People were tired and crazed and were running up to car rental shuttle vans desperately asking if they had cars available. I shared my parking shuttle with a guy who had spent all day trying to get to Phoenix. Eventually they told him he wasn't going the 23rd and he wasn't going the 24th... so he was on his way home to open a bottle of wine and make a new plan for Christmas.

Anyway, the point of all this is such:

1. Lots of bad travel things happened to people over the holidays (like the guy who fell 40 feet off the overpass in his car??), but this is a good story.

2. Standby travel is amazing. I haven't ever really done it before, but I am a convert for sure.

3. Maybe we all do a lot of bitching, but this all worked out very well for me. I was very lucky-- if I hadn't made that early flight in SDQ, I would have spent Christmas in Miami.

4. I am stuck in the house because of an ice storm... why was it again I didn't want to spend Christmas in Miami?

5. Happy belated-Solstice, Happy Chanukah, Merry Christmas, Happy Boxing Day, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy New Year.