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Got to the Chicago airport 20 minutes early. They didn’t have any food that I wanted so I settled for chips and cheese and Sprite. Pretty much every flight leaving Chicago was delayed by an hour or two, including mine. At some point I’m talking to Jammie when she gets a call from Nate, wanting to know what my flight number is. After I hang up with Jammie, I eventually end up calling the PLA Voice Bridge and hear Nate and Mgross (and somebody else I think) in a phone call with some airport lady, trying to contact me with some kind of an emergency. Something to do with my wife being pregnant and me being in Chicago to visit my girlfriend. Eventually I get paged at the airport so I go to the desk and tell them that I’m Brad Carter. This really nice old man seems genuinely concerned and tells me that I got an emergency phone call from a doctor. He tells me the doctor’s name and asks if I know him and I tell him yes. The entire time, I’m on the bridge with my cell phone so everyone can hear me retrieving my message. The old man hands me a note, telling me my doctor’s name and the phone number to the bridge. He tells me good luck and that he hopes it all works out okay. I respond with something like, “Yeah, my wife, when she had her last baby she died so we’re hoping that doesn’t happen again.” Both the old man and the lady next to him give me an, “Oh my!” (or something like that) to let me know they understand what I must be going through. Then I walk away, leaving them to be confused about the statement. So that was fun. Thanks for making my flight delay a little more interesting! My flight finally left at 11:20 and got to NYC about 2 hours later. There was a big thunderstorm over the airport so they had to circle around a few times, waiting for the storm to pass which seemed to take forever. We landed at 3:00am. Here’s countykid’s take on last night’s events.
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I just barely made my 1:30pm flight. Barely, as in running up to the gate, out of breath, just as they were going to close the door. The Amtrak got me to the station around 12:15. Just 30 minutes late which wasn’t so bad. I resisted the urge to get into a taxi, and instead walked 8 or so blocks through Chinatown in the rain to the Max stop. By then it was 12:30 and it’s a 30 minute train ride to the airport. We arrived at the airport at 1:05. I walked as quickly as I could to the security checkpoint, to find 3 horribly long lines. I picked the shortest one and spent my time sending nervous text messages to Jammie. The line moved quickly enough, then the guy wanted to hand search my jacket pockets since I had so much weird-looking metal stuff in there. By now it’s 1:25. A text message from Jammie reads, “RUN!” So I do, carrying my shoes, laptop, jacket, backpack, suitcase, lucky bowling pin and my glow in the dark snorkle. The overhead PA announces a final boarding call for my flight and thankfully tells me the gate number since I hadn’t managed to get that yet. Luckily it’s fairly close - gate A9. I arrive right at 1:30, the closest I’ve ever come to missing a flight. I’m on the plane now and it’s 3:13 PST, drinking a Pepsi, bored to death but happy not to be stranded in the airport for the night. Only 2.5 hours til Chicago. I skipped breakfast this morning and we didn’t even get pretzels or peanuts on this flight. I’m gonna be starving when we reach Chicago. Hopefully the bar there has decent food.
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