My Insatiable Wanderlust

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Weather and Wet Wipes

Weather and wet wipes when combined, the two can delay a trip across the world by four days! Here is how that happened to our group of intrepid globe trekkers.

Tuesday, March 5 - Snowstorm Saturn strikes the midwest which ultimately cancels over 1,000 flights in and out of Chicago. We stayed the night in Bloomington, not even venturing toward the Indy airport.

Wednesday, March 6 - Weather moves on to the east coast, but the temps stay near freezing. This requires our plane to get a de-icing bath before departure to Chicago; and delaying our arrival by 40 minutes. Of course, planes in Chicago also needed to be de-iced. And the one that was in our arrival gate, couldn't leave before getting its bath. You guessed it, another 40 minutes.

Have you ever seen a group of PhD science sprinters? We flew by 2 terminals at O'Hare to find that our flight into SFO was also delayed. No, not because of ice on the wings, but because of a frozen water pipe in the bathrooms. Our original plane had a malfunctioning door, so a new plane was used as a substitute. The bad things was regulations require sanitary conditions. And our at capacity plane with a nearly 5 hour flight into San Fran needed a means of sanitation. Hence, our pilot placed an order for wet wipes. We found out the hard way how long it takes to find and deliver more than 400 wet wipes. Long enough to miss our connection into Hong Kong.

What a way to start a journey ...