12.29.2008
home for the holidays
I went back to Illinois from Saturday the 20th until Saturday the 27th. And as it turns out, Illinois is cold in the winter. Rrurrrl cold. It was -2 degrees last Sunday when I woke up. Then the sun came out and it was still -2 degrees. Then it was 3pm and it was still -2 degrees. Why didn't the sun warm the Earth!? And we're not talking -2 degrees windchill. This was the raw temperature.
All this freezing weather caused another strange phenomenon I never witnessed in my nineteen winters up north. Everything, and I mean everything, was coated with a sheet of ice. All the trees, all the streets and sidewalks, everything. And it was windy, so a big gust would come through and blow huge chunks of ice out of the trees. It sounded like a meteor shower was hitting my house and car. I feared for my safety amid the barrage of ice missiles from the night sky.
But despite the cold, I actually didn't get antsy about coming home until Friday morning. On Friday, by the way, the temperature had warmed to 50 degrees. This rapid warming effect caused an enormous blanket of fog on the ground that was so thick, no planes flew into the Central Illinois Regional Airport that day. And because no planes flew in, there were no outgoing planes to take me home on Saturday morning. But I still went to the airport at 5:30a, where the desk agents had already activated their Anti-Customer Shields. So I was trying to get on a standby flight later that morning, but they were giving me the usual "we're overbooked on that flight" canned response and asked if I wanted to reschedule on their next open flight (which leaves this Wednesday). But I was one step ahead of them since I've been on the phone with a call center reservations agent that morning, and I happened to know that they were only booked to capacity, not overbooked as he'd so casually claimed. As soon as I brought that small fact into the light, he abandoned the "overbooked" argument.
So I asked again about standby and the agent was oblivious. He was like "Standby? Is that the movie with Wil Wheaton and the leeches?" I calmly explained the concept of a standby flight to the guy and he was very hesitant. "Well, I guess you can go wait at the gate but there's no guarantee you'll get on the flight."
"Yes sir. I'm familiar with the concept, but it's a risk I'm willing to take."
And wouldn't you know I did get that standby flight, which turned out to be a direct route instead of my original Atlanta layover trip. And bonus - I got a seat in business class! So I guess it wasn't all bad. It just shows that perseverance and a preemptive call to the reservations call center will go a long way.
