We started planning our Australia expedition a year ago. Tom is an obsessive travel planner – he likes to have a plan for every single day he’ll be on the road. He’s also deeply pessimistic – he always assumes disasters are going to happen. This trait is generally amusing to the rest of the family and sometimes kind of annoying. But he is totally redeemed when disasters actually do happen, because he always has a Plan B, a Plan C and a Plan D ready. (This time he started working on a Plan E, but that involved something about Pittsburgh so the less said the better.)
We always knew that if we tried to get to Australia in the dead of the Maine winter, the leg most likely to be screwed up was the one that got us off the East Coast. So we scheduled three days in San Francisco before we actually had to catch the plane that would take us to summer. Good thinking, because this turned out to be the snowiest winter on record in the Northeast. Storm after storm sweeping through Boston and Maine piled up a ridiculous amount of snow and interrupted travel all over the country.
We realized three days in advance of our Sunday morning flight from Boston to San Francisco that there was no chance the plane would actually take off. There was yet another blizzard on the way threatening to dump another foot of snow. Se we began the waiting game with United Airlines; when would they announce a waiver of change fees for travelers wanting to change their plans to avoid the weather? Answer: Friday afternoon. We were in Portland that day, planning to take the bus to Boston on Saturday. We looked at flights out of Newark (crappy seats and it was going to snow there too). We looked at Dulles (also crappy seats and it’s a pain to get there). The answer proved to be Baltimore. The train from Boston stops right at the airport and there was a 7 a.m. flight that had lots of seats. So we changed our reservation and bought train tickets.
Standing in South Station in Boston looking at the big board. It’s just beginning to snow and all of the local trains are already delayed, some of them cancelled. But the long-distance Amtrak trains say they are running on time. Until ten minutes before our train is to leave – suddenly it says delayed, and an announcement tells us there’s a “maintenance issue.”
Tom sank to his knees in despair and a few more hairs turned white. If we can’t get to Baltimore we’re screwed. This turned out to be a minor setback, fortunately. We got to Baltimore, checked into a hotel around midnight, then crawled out of bed at 3:30 a.m. to head for the airport.
Everything looks great now. We board the plane and I send off a cocky post to Facebook saying we are finally on the way to San Francisco.
What happened next is totally my fault – the universe slapping me down for my hubris.
The pilot comes on the intercom and tells us the plane is broken and we have to get off. Apparently the ground crew forgot to drain the water lines overnight and they are frozen solid. Toilets don’t work, plane can’t fly. Also, apparently, there’s a warning light flashing – something about the navigation system – and they may have to fly in a part from Newark, where flights are being cancelled as we speak.
More white hair appearing on Tom’s head.
Since we were not trying to catch a connection in San Francisco, we were far down on the priority list for rerouting. Just as Tom was about to get to the head of the line, they suddenly announced that the plane was fixed. Guess they found the part, or decided it wasn’t really broken. And in the meantime, with the plane sitting there running the heaters, the water lines had thawed. Everybody back on the plane, except the unfortunate few who had already been loaded onto flights to Denver or Houston.
After all this trauma we ended up arriving in San Francisco two hours earlier than the Boston flight would have arrived, if it had taken off, which it did not.
And it was definitely not snowing in San Francisco.