A Travel Nightmare

When you are older, your flying experience should be flyer friendly. Security and other new rules are sometimes mind boggling to an older person. This is a nightmare flight that I had to contend with.

First of all, I arrived at the airport and security. I dutifully took my jacket off and put my shoes in the little plastic tub.
I went through the x-ray, and beeped, rather loudly. I looked around to see if I had created a stir, but other seasoned passengers did not even notice my alarming episode.

"Miss," the screener called. I liked her right away, because I looked more like a older Ma'am, then a Miss. I had to re-enter the x-ray but beeped again. She asked me to remove my jewelry and put it in this other little basket. I did and the little basket dumped over in the scanner. I went through the x-ray without a sound, but when I went to retrieve my jewelry, some of it had gotten way laid between the scanner and the end of the line.

"I lost some of my jewelry," I explained to deaf ears. I guess she figured if it beeped, it wasn't any great loss.
I had to crawl under the machine to retrieve my favorite ring. I went to pick up my shoes and coat from the other plastic tub, and they were gone. I walked bare footed to the man on duty and explained my dilemma. He said that they pick up the tubs if someone does not claim them right away. I tried to explain that I was under the scanner trying to retrieve my jewelry, but once again, deaf ears. He found my items and I gingerly put on my shoes.

"Lady, you cannot lean on the machine," he said. How was I, at my age, going to get these shoes on without leaning on something. When he looked the other way, I leaned and put my shoes on.

Well, security was finished. I went to the gate to find out that my plane was going to be delayed about one hour, due to a thunderstorm in Chicago. When I boarded the plane, I knew in an instant that my connecting flight was not going to wait for me.

That was a good deduction, as that flight had left five minutes before I got there. I was put on a stand-by list for the next flight. Two flights later and still no seat. By this time, Chicago's O'Hare Airport was a mess. People were strewn all over the place. All of the food places had run out of food, and the bathrooms were non operating.

I offered to fly to three other cities so that I could just get out of the mayhem at this airport. Six hours later I did get on a flight.

I got to the airport and went to retrieve my bag. It seems that it had gotten on the flight that I was five minutes late for. It had gotten to my destination hours before me. Of course, it was pulled from the carousel and was waiting in the baggage room of my airline. I went there to get my bag. The sign said, "Be back in a hour."

My consolation was the fact that I had not eaten since early morning, and an hour would be fine for me to grab something nutritious.

An hour later I had gotten my bag out of the room and went to board a bus to my hotel. Big sign was on the bus stop, "Buses stop running at midnight." It was a minute past midnight and they had stopped running. The early morning bus run was 6:00 a.m. I took a cab to my hotel, which cost me $75.

I blame this horrendous trip on a thunderstorm to this day. I hesitate to fly through Chicago at any time of year, because of this mish mash of events. I have to sit back and laugh at the many major hurdles that I had to climb that trip, but I always heard that flying was an adventure.