More desultory tales from a Not-So-Savvy Traveler

This episode: ABBA saved my life, tonight

Tuesday morning, I flew off to Atlanta. It wasn't a trip I was looking forward to, even though Atlanta is beautiful. However, it was just a two day visit, and most of it would be spent traveling: wake up at five on Tuesday, arrive in Phillie at ten (hi dreamcowgirl!), then into Atlanta at noon (hi mylifetake2!>. Then, Wednesday, fly off at two, wait in Phillie until nine, then arrive back in Rhode Island at ten thirty.

In a word: yuck.

It became even worse because of the weather.

I got my first hint that things were going to go really bad Wednesday afternoon, around five. As I was schlepping my suitcase to the next terminal, I received a call from Theo.

"Daddy," he said. "We just spent the afternoon in the cellar!"

"That's nice, sweetie," I said, then paused. "What?"

"Mom called us from work and told us there were tornadoes around here," he said. "She told Ashes and me to go into the cellar, so we brought the dog and the rabbit and ran downstairs. We stayed there for about an hour, and Ashes peed into a Halloween bag and everything!"

Hmmm. Maybe there are some things I didn't need to know.

But it was true. Corb and Josie both confirmed it. No, not about Ashes peeing in a Halloween bag, silly, but that the area around Eldredge had been under a tornado watch all afternoon. According to my friend Sarah, the area where I work was just as bad, with an hour long blackout and thunder and lightning raining on a day worse than the one when King Lear railed at the heavens from atop a mountain.

Well, I sort of figured that that sort of ungodly weather would have an effect on air traffic. I mean, it would have to, right? But even so, there was a part of me...oh, I'm sure that it's natural...a part of me that figured that somehow...somehow, impossibly...somehow, it just couldn't effect me.

So, for the next three hours I sat at the terminal, in a state of blissful ignorance. I listened, as flight after flight was cancelled or delayed because of the weather. At eight o'clock, I patiently trudged to the other end of the airport terminal, when we were told that our plane had been moved to another location.

My plane was supposed to arrive at nine. At nine, we were told it had been delayed until ten.

At ten, we were told the plane had been forced to land at Raleigh-Durham for a while.

And at eleven, I heard the five nastiest words in the human language:
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