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Going home
By Michael | December 23, 2009
How did you get home from school this semester? Was it a flight? Car ride? Was it was a train…or maybe even the bus. Well I had a mixture of them all.
To understand this we must back tract some time, to around 7 or 8 am UK time Saturday, which is 2 or 3 EST. We found out that because of a huge storm hitting the eastern seaboard my flight, which was supposed to connect me to Buffalo from Newark, New Jersey was canceled. We could not get in touch with the airline so we had to just wait and go to the airport. Around 1030am UK time we waved goodbye to our London flat and began an hour ride by car/van to Heathrow International. [1st mode of transportation]
Once in Heathrow it was chaos because the storm had A. not hit yet and B. was no where near London or Europe but was still causing problems. We found out that there is nothing we can do to reschedule flights until we get to the US. At this point I’m nervous. My emotion was something like a child that got in trouble in school and knew they were to be in trouble when they get home; I was not looking forward to it at any cost.
After waiting and boarding the plane we had to wait a while to be de-iced (this I was not upset about, when it comes to safety….take your time, no rush!). Once in the air I had to sit for an 8 hour flight to the US [2nd mode of transportation].
I’m not going to go into detail about what happened between the time I landed and the time I got to the front of the Continental line to rebook my flight…it’s much too tedious. Let’s just say it included being lost, cold, hungry, aggravated, lost/delayed luggage, wrong information and long lines.
Once at the font of the line my IPOD read 1035pm….SIDE BAR my plane should have landed at 1034pm in Buffalo, anyhow I was told and given two options to get home.
1. I could be put on the first available flight to Buffalo…which would have meant flying out 330ish Wednesday, December 23, 2009!! I still would not be home!
2. I could take a taxi to LaGuardia and be put on a flight to Rochester. The sweet part about this was the fare…Roughly $100. But the flight not 100% likely to takeoff. OH yea…I DON’T LIVE IN Rochester.
Again I’m not going to go in to detail about what happened from that time to 7am… But it in included, sleeping in an airport, public transit bus [3rd mode of transportation] and Penn Station.
At around 7 am we were at the Greyhound Station waiting for our 9:05 bus to Buffalo when we were told we would not know until 9:00 if our Greyhound [4th mode of transportation] was canceled or would actually arrive to take us home. Well it finally arrived (late) and we got on, after paying for our oversized luggage. We got home but only after stops in SCRANTON, PA, BINGHAMTON, NY, ITHACA, NY, GENEVA, NY, ROCHESTER, NY, and BATAVIA, NY
Thanks for riding with me. It has been a great semester.
Michael R. Coad
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