In the last episode of this blog, I talked about the debacle of going to the wrong airport and being fortunate enough to get a flight from Reagan National to Myrtle Beach, the only one available for that day. The only snag is that there are no direct flights to Myrtle Beach from DC, hence the reason I probably booked out of Baltimore in the first place.
Where was the layover from DC? To Chicago, Illinois.
For those unfamiliar with American geography, Chicago is in the north midwestern portion of the United States. Their airport is even named Midway, marking their position as almost midway across the country! Looking at it on the map, the reality of the ridiculousness is even more apparent. What would originally have been an hour and a half flight ended up stretching out to a half day’s travel.
We landed in Chicago without incident and thankfully, it was only raining and not snowing. We waited at the same gate where we disbanded, and even though it said Fort Lauderdale, I figured that it was Fort Lauderdale with a stop at Myrtle Beach. After almost two hours, I got the notification on my phone that the flight was boarding and the announcement at gate 7 was that the flight soon be boarding. As it usually is on Southwest, passengers are called by boarding position and Ayden and I were in B23 and 24.
When it was our turn to get into position, we moved to our spot and another passenger, a gentleman traveling alone, asked our number. We moved into place by the silver beams that signaled the boarding numbers in front the gentleman and mother and her three young children. She too asked my number because she must have heard my answer. My first impression was that I had met a a Karen, and I was annoyed by her request.
“My number is 23, too,” she said. We compared our passes.
My gate was 17, not 7.
Ayden and I hauled ass down the corridor to gate 17 full speed Home Alone 2-style, where the attendant had just closed the door and nicely reopened it to let us onboard.
This blog post was going to be longer, but I have relived the trauma of almost missing a flight and now can’t go on.
More soon.
The anticipation of reading these first two!