Day the First: Snafubar

We begin as we begin all things in life, with a trip to the Edwardses, where I stay overnight in anticipation of the flight the next day. Hannah arrives early in the morning, and her father drives us to the airport. All is uneventful in the beginning of the flight.

We were warned of questionable weather in JFK, our connecting airport. I read the entirety of Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five and half of The Classical Mind, the first in a series of five books on the history of philosophy. The ominous weather predictions turned out to be true, and this is where our path diverges from the expected.

Originally, we were going to connect with another American Airlines flight to Charles de Gaulle airport, with an hour and a half layover. The ground conditions forced us into a holding pattern, and the holding pattern forced us into a low-fuel situation. We had to land at Logan. Not the correct airport, though we did try to stay on the sunny side by envisioning terminal-located Legal Seafood Crabcakes and Chowder in our future. We were subsequently told that we would not be leaving the plane for the next couple hours.

On the ground, we got a bearing on the status of our connecting flight. Never before had I hoped that one of my flights was grossly delayed. I was happy to hear that it was, and it became a race to see if we could get there in time.

By the time we left Logan, we were over five hours late, but our plane had not yet departed. We landed at JFK, finally, and were waiting with baited breath to see if we could actually make our connection.

We were on the tarmac for two hours. Waiting to get to our gate. This is when the frustration set in; the climax of which was to see our very flight to Paris, the one we were supposed to be on, taxi to the runway before our very eyes and depart without us. This was compounded by the fact that the total time we spent on the plane had already been equivalent to a direct flight to LA to Paris: 12 hours.

Needless to say, much discussion of emergency plans ensued. After departing the plane, we made extra-special care to confirm that our bags would, yes they promise, be passed on to our flight which we had already booked from the tarmac for the next day. We sat down to find accomodations, which would, in fact, not be comped by AA because it was weather related, and "not [their] problem, " as one passing flight attendant so tactfully informed us.We get on the internet and start calling hotels, but they are almost all booked because of the inclement weather. We keep increasing the radius of our search, calling every hotel we can.

Thirty-five hotel calls later, we find one. The lady told me that, sure, they would hold the rooms for me, but, no, they did not need my name. My desire for "faith that this would work" out did battle with my logical side that was "confused as to how they could hold the rooms without a name", but in the end, I told the lady that we would be there in an hour or so.

I had just read in Slaughterhouse Five that "the surest way to hear God laugh is to broadcast your plans aloud." I only think of this in retrospect, but, needless to say, minutes later we found ourselves wading through pools of urine to make it to the end of the long, long queue for taxis. So much for an hour or so, and Welcome to New York City!

Fortunately, an angel appeared, in the form of a trashy old New Yorker in a suburban who accosted us in line and said he would get us there for sixty-five bucks. We did it. And we got there, and found a pizza place catering to drunk kids to boot. It was 4:30 AM. We all ate pizzas, and went to sleep.