...I have been to hell and let me inform you that you better get some religion right now.
S and I are currently in Connecticut celebrating the happy occasion of my step-dad's 60th birthday. We were supposed to get into White Plains, NY's airport on Friday at 3:30pm, rent a car, and get to the house in CT at 5pm or so.
We got on our flight in Denver at 7am MDT and got to our connection in Atlanta at 11am EDT with no issue. We get on our flight to White Plains on time at 1:15pm EDT. The flight is uneventful until we get to the airspace above White Plains.
And remain there.
For an hour.
Because there's not enough visibility to land.
Then get diverted to Newark, NJ. And land.
But they won't let us off the plane because the clouds over WP might clear up at any time.
We hear this many many times over the next FOUR hours as we sit there, waiting.
And waiting.
And waiting.
This would simply be obnoxious if it weren't for the fact that because I'm dehydrated, and by about the time we land in Newark, I'm developing a headache that is about as close to a migraine as you can come and not be a migraine. I'm nauseous. I'm extremely sensitive to smell, light, and sound. My head is pounding.
And we're trapped on an airplane for FOUR hours. They've even turned the stupid air off. We're just sitting there, by the runway, stewing, with the pilot coming on the intercom about once an hour to say "really, it's supposed to clear up any minute."
The *only* thing that gets AirTran to finally go to a gate and give us the option of getting off the plane is the fact that there's a woman with epilepsy in the front row who hasn't eaten over the eight hours since we first set foot on that plane and if this continues, she'll have a seizure. So they taxi to a gate to let her off, and then the mutiny begins. Passengers with New York accents and deep male voices are beginning to yell "HEY LET US OFF THIS PLANE." The crew is beginning to care very little for regulations.
Finally, they let us go. In Newark. About two hours further south than where we're supposed to be. About 5 hours after we were supposed to have arrived.
At this point, I'm not kidding, I'm weeping from pain.
S escorts me to the nearest kiosk where they have a whole beautiful bottle of excedrin migraine and cold, delicious water.
We go to the car rental counter to see if we can transfer our reservations, get a car and go. But the Hertz at Newark won't let us transfer our reservation because we have to return the car to Newark; we can't return it anywhere else.
So we go to the only car rental company that will allow us to do this, Avis, and the line is 20 people deep.
That's when I call my step-dad and step-brother who are at the new Yankee stadium for the first game. They agree to come pick us up when they're done. Fortunately for us, they've put the second string in by then so the exhibition game is much less exciting, and they kindly decide to leave early.
An hour after I've taken the headache medicine and we've finally gotten to eat a meal at McDonald's, which is the only thing open at that hour, my migraine-in-training finally, blessedly, subsides. We stand out on the curb in the fresh air and await my step-family and rehash our experience over and over, pointing out silver linings (at least it wasn't our first flight that got diverted, otherwise we'd be nowhere near home; at least the 12 year old girl who was flying alone started crying before I did) and terrible decisions (or lack there of, like the one they should have made hours and hours earlier to get us on a bus to White Plains, which is what they were threatening to do when we finally left them on the plane, or the decision we made to use AirTran and fly to WP when we could have used any other airline and flown to Bradley, which was fine).
Remember how we were going to get in at 5pm after a 2 hour flight and a one hour drive? We got in at 1am, after a four hour flight, four more hours on the plane, an hour or so of waiting at the airport, and a 2.5 hour drive.
Here's the beautiful view of Newark from the plane:
Gorgeous, no?
If a migraine on a plane that's sitting by a runway in Newark not moving and full of angry New Yorkers and crying 12 and 29 year olds doesn't qualify as hell, then I'm going to say that Dante unknowingly took a detour and missed a circle.
It was that bad.
However, I've learned that when the chips are down, my husband can invoke the patience of a Saint. When my headache cleared there was much venom and frothing to be shared, but when I was a wreck and we were in the thick of misery, he was an angel.
Steve for the win.
