Should have been simple, right? A one day conference in Chicago.
Well, it actually all started a couple of months ago when I heard that the National NAGEELA conference would be taking place in New York City. Naturally, as very organized people, we immediately booked flights. It was only after the flights were arranged that the location of the conference was switched to Chicago.
Ok. One strike, but we changed our tickets and now we're heading to Chicago. The flights from Las Vegas into the windy city are sparse, and we ended up scheduled on a 12:50AM flight. After we get to the airport, we find out that the flight is delayed until 2:30.
Great.
We finally get into Chicago, where it's 7 degrees, as opposed to the 70 in Las Vegas. We swing by the place the meetings are going to be held and immediately begin ingesting large amounts of caffeine.
The meetings went pretty well. We made all kinds of great plans, had wonderful food, and I'm imbibed more caffeine.
Then our flight got delayed again. And again. Turns out theres this website where you can actually track your plane's progress in the air, as well as how many bags of peanuts each passenger managed to grab while the flight attendant wasn't looking. The wonders of technology!
This website told me that our plane was still somewhere over Georgia, and would depart Chicago at 11:59pm. Great, that means I wouldn't be home until at least 1am. Well, what can you do? I get to the airport at 11:00, and it completely dead. Nobody behind the airline counter.
We ask the guy mopping what's going on, and he tells us that the security checkpoint is closed.
"well how am I supposed to get to my flight?"
"you're not."
"but we just called the airline, and after a while of trying to find someone who spoke English, they told us the plane is still on the ground!"
"you're also on the ground and you are going to stay that way."
"Is there a single security checkpoint in this airport that is open?"
Now you might be thinking, "This is Chicago O'Hare, the busiest airport in the world... How is it possible that there aren't any open checkpoints?"
No idea.
It's the next day, and I'm still in Chicago. Naturally, the airline put us on the NEXT flight out, which is 24 hours later. At least they have good burgers here.
I'll keep on updating...
