amkean pronunciation

Uff. I get into these happy little ruts in my life, and become resentful of changes, even if the changes are ostensibly my choice. To wit: Last weekend, I agreed to participate in a tournament with my handball club. I enjoy the tournaments, I really do, but at the same time, this is a weekend where I could be getting some homework done, or cooking. Instead, I had to rush to the airport after work on Friday so that I don't sit in the security line while my plane takes off. This involves finding a ride, or taking the bus, in which case I must leave even earlier. To ease the hassle somewhat, I got a direct flight to Raleigh/Durham (which is now listed as Durham/Raleigh on the nwa website...curious, no?), and a direct flight back. This is how it went down.

Bryan picks me up at the airport on Friday night and we go play 27 holes of Golden Tee. I had never played before, but I can see the appeal now. A good bar game. Wake up Saturday morning, look at the paper and read something like "Triangle Braces for Ice Storm." The triangle is in no way, shape, or form prepared for any sub-freezing precipitation. This does not bode well for my Sunday flight. Bryan and Jeni talk of going back to Charlotte early, with the enthusiastic support of Bryan's worried mother, with whom we were staying. I played handball all day Saturday, four games, and missed dinner with B&J, who left for Charlotte. Went to eat with teammates, and met someone from Edina. Very nice. The, uh, diamond in the rough, as it were. Sunday morning, go play one game. The Edina woman tells me all flights are canceled, that she won't be flying out until tomorrow. I call and reschedule for a different flight on Sunday. Curiously, it goes through Newark, near the heart of the east coast blizzard. Wanting to just get home, I agreed to fly into the storm for a chance to get home. It's raining by now. And cold. get a ride to the airport, and on the way I see about 10-15 cars smashed on the sides of the roads. This is curious–how did they get smashed? It was just a single smashed car almost every time. I could understand if they were smashing into each other, but how does one lose control, crumple the front of one's car, and end up facing the wrong way on an overpass? It was like invisible barriers were being erected around the highways. Cars in ditches, I can understand, too, but these cars were not in ditches, just smashed. Why? Why? I call, and my flight is still on.

Waiting to board, I see these cute kids. They looked Turkish. One had this little chalkboard and said to his mom "Let's do math! You make a problem, and I will answer it." He was about 7 years old. I thought, "God bless this child and the math he does." If only everyone could be as enthusiastic about math, the world would be free of war and famine. As it turned out, one of these kids was in my seat when I got on the plane. this plane had 3 seats on either side of the aisle. Mom, Dad, and little brother were on one side, and the older boys (7 and 5, maybe) were sitting in my window seat and the middle seat, leaving the aisle seat open. I stood, put on my confused look waiting for the dad to take care of it, and he did. I didn't care to sit in between family members, and I like to lean my head. I had wisely purchased a puzzle magazine and began doing some puzzles to pass the time. This turned out to be one of the wisest purchases I have ever made. We sat on the tarmac for over 90 minutes waiting for the joker plane behind us to move so we could get deiced. I noticed the 5 year old was watching my puzzles. I was a little nervous about that, fearing that he would correct my answers because these were obviously overachieving brainy children. Next thing I knew, the little boy was resting his elbow on my arm instead of the armrest, then he fell asleep, leaning his head on my shoulder. Ok... Didn't last long, and eventually we got in the air and landed in Newark, late. I didn't know what time it was, but I figured my connecting flight to Minneapolis would be delayed for sure. We sat on the ground, waiting for a gate for over 30 minutes. By this time the cute kids were rambunctious. They kept yanking the airplane phone out and playing with it, would play with their seatbelts, made them click as loud as they could, and the squirming! The older boy especially kept getting up and moving around, and it seemed like the dad was only sometimes concerned that the boys were being both obnoxious and in violation of FAA regulations. Because we had been sitting for so long, the captain gave the OK to use cell phones while we were waiting for a gate, so I called to check on my connection which had miraculously taken off on time. This, as it turns out, would be my one chance to get back to Minneapolis before Tuesday night. It was very snowy and windy in Newark, and I couldn't believe the flight had left. I calmly gathered my stuff and went to talk to the Northwest ticket agent at Newark in a different terminal. Of course it was much too late, so I called and learned that no flights were available until Wednesday, unless I wanted to go to White Plains. I didn't know where White Plains was, and the operator said 45 miles away. I figured it was worth it to get home the next day. By this time, it was almost 11 pm. The White Plains flight left at 6 am. I learned that there was no way to get directly from Newark to White Plains, so I waited for the bus to Grand Central Station. I looked at the schedule, and it looked like the bus that would be coming didn't go to GCS, but i thought i should ask anyway. The bus pulled up and this elderly lady told the driver she was going to GCS. He dismissed her with an angry wave of his hand, saying something like "Get back there." He asked me where I was going so that he could do the same thing to me. The next bus driver was much friendlier. I got on the bus and heard some music coming from the back. I saw a man with headphones, but the incongruous part was that instead of loud rap music pouring from the headphones for the benefit of everyone around this gentleman, I heard Sinatra-type music. In the seat in front of me, a woman kept coughing these hacking, painful-sounding coughs. Every once in a while, she would vocalize a little moan to make it sound even more painful. I got off the bus and trudged through the snow to GCS, watching some tourist wipe out in front of me. She had been hanging on to her companion at the time, which leads me to believe she may have been soused to begin with. I boarded the train to White Plains station, and this was the most normal part of the trip. A simple commuter train, going through Manhattan and The Bronx, to my penultimate destination. It was after 1 am now, and I waited at the taxi stand with a bunch of other travelers. No one else was going to the airport, though. A cab would pull up, ask people were they were going, decide if he wanted to drive there, then accept or refuse the fare. Some travelers were more aggressive, ignoring the queue to attack the next cab that pulled up. I had been told that a cab ride to the airport was about $10. The first cab asked me where I was going and said $25. I refused. The next one said $18, and I accepted, given the hour and weather conditions. I shared the pleasantly fragrant air-freshened cab with a guy getting back from visiting his girlfriend in Atlanta. He had an English accent. He got out, then the cab driver looked behind him and reversed on the snowy road. In order to look behind, he had to get out of the car, as all the windows were frosted over. The windshield was only ice-covered. He ran his windshield wipers the whole time, the the right wiper had a flat enough piece of ice on it that it was clearing a 2 inch path on the passenger side. I noticed that the heat wasn't turned all the way up, nor was the defroster on. Somehow we made it to the airport at 2 am, where I was the only passenger in the whole place. The 6 or so workers there barely moved from their seated slumbers when i arrived. It's a small airport, and cold. First thing I saw was that my 6 am flight had been canceled. There was still a 12:30 flight scheduled, though, so I figured there wasn't much I could do at that moment, so I laid down and tried to sleep after putting on 5 layers. Every 10 minutes or so, the announcement would come on the PA system "Welcome to Westchester County Airport..." This roused me from whatever sleep I was getting. Plus, it was too cold to sleep. At around 4 am, I heard talking. Some woman was talking to security people or whoever would listen about her attempts to fly out. Eventually I got up, brushed my teeth, and wandered down to the ticket line after calling and booking myself onto the 12:30 flight. From about 4:45 am to 8 am, I waited in line for the Northwest agent before finding out that they weren't coming and the 12:30 was canceled. I went to the diner in the airport where I has the best coffee, bagel and hash browns I'd had in a long time. Then I started calling my people. Gretchen was very helpful in framing the situation and recommending a hotel. I resigned myself to staying in a hotel, and then found out I had no way to get there. Me: "How much is it to Stamford?" Dispatcher: "$30-40, depending on where you're going. (pause) But I don't have any cars today. I told all my drivers to stay home. It's too dangerous." finally, I decided to rent a car because there was no way I was sleeping in that airport again. I drove in low gear the whole way to the hotel maxing out at 25 mph, and found a place to park that wasn't full of snow. I ran two red lights on the way for fear of getting stuck. I felt great relief after checking in, accepting the ramifications because I had no choice. I was helpless, and now I could just enjoy cable tv. The hotel clerk was the same guy I had called, and was there the whole time during my stay, working the front desk and serving dinner. I got my exercise in because if I had anything, it was gobs of time, and I trekked to the grocery store so that I could finally take my contacts out after leaving my lens solution in Raleigh Friday night. the treadmill in the hotel changed speeds on its own. funny. I ordered chinese for dinner and was so, so disappointed and the szechuan tofu. however, the veggie dumplings were terrific. the next morning, i had tofu for breakfast and shoveled out my car. I made it to the airport fine and sat in the warm skyway connecting the airport to the garage. Secret spot. Got to overhear TSA employees being dressed down for slacking. I guess the skyway was their conference room, too. When I was in the gate area waiting for my flight, the most talktative woman ever was bending this kid's ear for the longest time, talking about everything, mostly complaining, and the conversation gave clues that they were strangers. I wasn't willing to trade places with him, though. Made it to Detroit, which is really nice now (the airport, anyway), then got on a delayed flight to MSP. The flight to Minneapolis had to use a holding pattern over Eau Claire after having the cabin fill with a smoky gas with the smoke alarms going off. It took the staff a long time to tell us that it was nothing to worry about, and that we weren't crashing.

And we got 7th place in the tournament.