De-laid. pt 1
My journey from Manchester to LAX was a bit of a rollercoaster ride. My flight from Manchester to Chicago is delayed 4.5 hours :( I wasn’t too worried then, I knew I had a hefty layover in Chicago and I still should be able to make my flight from there to LAX and be back home as planned. Yeah, well things didn’t work out quite that nicely. We landed in Chicago just before 6pm. Of course at O’Hare you have to get off the plane, go through immigration, claim your baggage, go through customs, drop your baggage off again, exit the terminal, and proceed through security to make your way to your connecting flight. So upon exiting the plane, many connecting passengers were given new boarding passes and informed they had been rebooked on new flights because theirs had left or they would leave before they made it though the O’Hare obstacle course.
So, I had been rebooked on the 815pm flight to LAX. Oh okay, about 2 hours later than planned, I can handle that. Well by the time I made it through immigration, got stopped and inspected in customs for having 2 oranges in my possession, and made it back through security, my initial flight (the 630pm one) had been delayed about two hours and I TOTALLY COULD HAVE BEEN ON IT!!! But, of course my luggage had been rerouted and my seat given up so I had to wait it out for the 815pm flight—WHICH HAD BEEN DELAYED 3 HOURS!!! Basically I got to wait and see the flight I was supposed to be on board and take off while I hung out in the terminal. I had a quesadilla, bought an issue of Cosmo (which a very friendly guy at the Hudson News gave me for free because of the shitty situation that was going down at the airport—with people’s flights being cancelled left and right and delays happening like crazy—he definitely made my airport nightmare a little less awful).
So after a bajilion hours of waiting, and hauling around my extremely heavy North Face backpack and equally backbreaking carry-on duffel bag, my flight was delayed until 1150pm. I was pretty much falling asleep in the nearly empty airport that was painfully cheerful with Christmas lights and festive music. Right as the flight initially scheduled for 1015pm to LAX left at about 11pm, we forgotten 1150pm-ers boarded our flight. Just as I am settling in and flicking through the Sky Mall magazine we are informed that the pilot that was supposed to flying our flight has refused to do so, and we have been rescheduled for 8am the next morning.
Right about now I wanted to punch someone in the face
So we were given vouchers for the O’Hare Marriott and sent on out merry way. Hungry and tired I finally passed out in my hotel room around 1am. Of course the fun doesn’t stop there…
