Holiday Travel Craziness!

Sometimes life takes you on a roller-coaster that you don't expect.  The past two weeks have been that for me.  Although I'm not exactly excited to recount the last two weeks of my life, I might as well include this in my scrapbook of my life.  You might find this blog post boring, so feel free to skip this if you want.  To give you the whole story, let me back up to December 20th when I boarded a plane to Atlanta Ga.  I was on my way to spend 5 days with my family to celebrate Christmas.  On the plane a very stressed out mother of 3 young children had once again missed her connection due to our plane being delayed.  As I overheard her tell the flight attendant her terrible Christmas travel woes,  I thought to myself, that I was thankful that in all of my flying travels I really had not experienced a story like hers with missed connections, canceled flights, etc!  I did sit on a runway for 7 hours one time when flying by myself my freshmen year in college, but I have had years to recover from that one plus Delta gave me two free tickets.  Ok so fast forward a couple days.  We had a great time in Atlanta celebrating Christmas with my sister and brother-in-law and then I drove back to NC with my parents for Christmas in the mountains.  Two days before Christmas as we watched the weather we realized that snow was coming to the mountains and there was a good chance my flight back to NYC on Christmas night could very likely be canceled.  After praying through it all, I called Delta and they very graciously gave me a flight out on Christmas eve before the snow was expected.  NOW if you did not read my earlier post about South Africa you might be asking why it was such a big deal for me to get back to NYC.  Well this was because I was scheduled to fly to Cape Town, South Africa on the evening of the 26th.  I knew I needed to make that flight out of JFK airport so back to NYC I went. When I got to the Asheville airport, ABC local news was there and overhead my dad telling the airport attendant my story so that led to me being interviewed by the news station. When my parents watched the news that night the weather and my interview was the leading story!  It was incredibly weird and sad for me to wake-up on Christmas morning in my tiny apt by myself (it has always been a fear of mine that I would one day have to spend Christmas by myself) but I kept thinking about my amazing trip coming up and tried to have a good attitude.   It was definitely a Christmas like no other, but I did spend Christmas evening with friends which was nice.  By Christmas afternoon the snow that was in the mountains was heavily predicted to hit NYC by Sunday.  ugh oh!  Ok, so Sunday the snow started coming HEAVILY.  Mayor Bloomberg was on tv all day saying "stay inside....this weather is bad"  For NYC that is a big deal.  It is the city that never sleeps.....that never stops!  But this day he was telling the city to stop.  So I packed and I packed and was ready to go snow or no snow!  By the time I left for the airport at 6:00 P.M.  Snow was piled up but my flight was still scheduled for on time.  So off I went.  It normally takes about 45 to get to the airport but dragging my suitcase several blocks through snow, getting stuck on the airtrain for 30 minutes, being dropped off at a bus stop when the airtrain broke down, having to wait outside in the blizzard for 20 minutes,  and getting trampled as we all try to fight to get on a bus that will take us to the airport all makes the trek a little bit longer.  By the time I got dropped off outside the airport I felt like I had been hit by a truck. I was soaking wet, freezing, and so tired from carrying my suitcase through a blizzard.  I could barely walk or see (due to blowing snow) as I walked the last few feet to get to the door. BUT after a 3 hour trip I made it and was ready to go........only to find out all the airports in NYC had been closed.  Awesome.  So I check in with my airline and the airline attendant in a very matter of fact way says to me. "the airport is closed but they are going to open it for us in a few hours so that we can fly out"  Yeah right.  The snow was coming down harder than ever and it was not looking good.  At this point the airport is slammed with already hundred of canceled flights and canceled fights = stranded people.  So through Security I go to my gate.  After several hours of waiting they finally tell us that the airport is closed through the night and they will evaluate in the morning.  I do my best to fall asleep on the floor that night, but it was hard.  Morning could not have come fast enough, but by daylight snow was still falling and outside looked worse than before.  We knew we weren't getting out of there anytime soon.  CNN was playing on the tv in front of us and every other story was about the blizzard in the Northeast and the aiports in NYC all being closed.  It was quite the mess and I was in the middle of it.  Our airline attendants finally came back to the desk at our gate only to tell us our flight was delayed indefinitely and to give us meal vouchers.  Now you would think at least meal vouchers would be nice, but only 1 restaurant was open in our gate and 3 in our terminal.  AND with hundreds of people stuck in our terminal lines were soooo long and food was running out.  Oh and did I mention that you couldn't get to the other terminals due to a broken airtrain? It was seriously like a rat race to get food!  So wait in the airport we did.  I was flying a middle eastern airline and almost everyone who was flying in my terminal was from other countries so we were quite the diverse group.  I did meet some people and make some airport friends, but it was a long wait!  By the middle of the afternoon on the 27th, we had been been stuck in the airport for 15+ hours (some for longer) airport employees could not get to the airport (due to snow) so if you will, imagine a very dirty, stinky and crowded airport.  Bathrooms were flooded (and almost unusable) food was running out and people were cranky.  By this time I had missed my connection in Qatar for SA and the airline would not begin the process of going me a new flight until I got to the airport in Qatar.  Needless to say, by this time I was getting weary and  unsure if this trip was going to happen.  It didn't help that the airline attendants for my flight disappeared for about 5 hours and we had no idea what was going on.  So the wait went on and on and on.  The airport finally opened almost 24 hours after closing but flights were so backed up.  After a lot of thinking, praying, talking to my airline, discussing, etc I finally had to make the decision not to go to South Africa.  This was an incredibly hard decision to make, but nothing was looking good.  All the airline could tell me was that when our finally did take off (which was still to be determined) I would fly the 12 hour flight to the middle east alone and then wait to get put on a flight which could take another 2 days and potentially be on a flight that would then have another 1-2 layovers and at the end of it all they could not guarantee me that I would get to SA in time for the wedding.  ugh! After being trapped in an airport for this long the thought of that being the rest of my week was daunting to me.  I wanted to be there for Maggie sooooo badly and I wanted to go to South Africa soooooo much, but I had no peace. So at this point I asked to get my luggage back.  and since this had been a nightmare so far of course getting my luggage couldn't be easy.  but 3 hours after I was told I could pick up my luggage, my luggage finally decided to turn up and it was only after I literally had to fight my way through the masses (and I mean masses of people) to find someone who could help me.  I won't even go in to that story.  So with my flight still having not departed (plus I decided not to go, but still no transportation out of the airport) I spent my 2nd night in the airport.  It was a long night with little sleep.  A lady did let me use her cardboard box for a couple hours to lay on  and it was heavenly!  so many hours on a hard airport floor and a box is like a luxury bed!  So by the next morning I was tired, hungry, and sore, but wanted to get home.  Now with no car, no airtrain running, and no car services taking reservations I was a little unsure how this was going to happen.  I went outside to try to get a cab and realized quite quickly that would not work.  Due to massive snow and unplowed roads there were about 3 cabs for about 200 people in the cab line.  And did I mention that it is freezing outside!  So i go back inside to re-group and figure out how I am possibly going to get out of here.  I literally just stop and pray.  I am at the end of my rope and I just want to get home.  After 36 hours in the airport I finally talked to someone who was really nice and helpful and she suggested a try a certain bus company who was running express service to Manhattan.  I liked her idea but with so many people trying to get out of here now I wondered if it would really be a quick option.  But I go and try and to my great delight the bus driver lets me on the first bus out! YES!  I quickly load my luggage and off we go.  Once again I think this should be easy, but oh I'm wrong.  Streets were not plowed and traffic was stopped.  Literally people were getting out of their cars in NYC to shovel snow to drive.  Ugh it was such a mess!  But 3 hours later I had made it by bus to Grand Central, carried my suitcase down 3 flights of stairs, take 2 subways, carried my suitcase up 2 flights of stairs, dragged my suitcase 3 blocks in the slushy snow (definitely at one point had to cross a street with my luggage where the snow was piled up and came up to my thigh) and I was HOME!!  I have never been so thankful to see my cozy apt.  I was weak from tiredness and hunger but I was home.  After taking a hot shower and eating I fell into a deep sleep for several hours.  I woke up to the reality of no South Africa which was devastating to me.  A week later it is still hard for me to believe that  I didn't go.  I honestly can't let myself think about it too much or I get really sad, but the thing I am confident of is that I am not in control.  It was not out of God's hand that one of the worst blizzards in NYC history hit on the day I was supposed to go a dream trip and it was not out of God's hand when I was stranded for 40 hours.  I know me not going was God's best and I trust in that.  God took care of me in those hours when I felt so alone and anxious.  He provided peace for me when I needed it most.  He is a good God and I know that,  so in this disappointment I trust Him.  I know I may not understand why all of my Christmas travels turned out this way, but God's plan is best.  And I do pray that maybe I will be able to make it to Cape Town to see Maggie another time.

After all my stressful travels my dad did offer to fly me to NC to spend some time in the relaxing mountains, so crazy or not I braved the airport again a few days later.  I have never been so anxious to return to an airport (even though it was a different airport).   And never been so glad to get out of snowy, messy NYC!  

All the craziness of my travels was quite the nightmare.  You know it's bad when every other story on CNN is about the airports in NYC and you are in the middle of it!  But I made it through my nightmare and God took care of me.  I know so many people were praying for me, so if that was you......I really do appreciate it!!!  It was so incredibly encouraging to receive so many phone calls, emails, texts, from people asking me how I was doing and telling me they were praying for me.  I really felt the body of Christ and felt loved by so many. so if you are reading this and that was you THANK YOU!  

At the end of the blizzard I think the news said there were about 10,000 flights cancelled due to all the snow that the East Coast got.  Woah!!  I definitely think this will be a Christmas I will never forget!!  Maybe by next Christmas I will have fully recovered from all the craziness!  

If you made it to the end of this long, boring post I am impressed!!  One day maybe I will write about some of the funny/crazy stories I have from my time in the airport.  Yes there is more that I haven't written!  But for now, this has to be enough.  

For the few of you that made it to the bottom of this post, I hope you had a wonderful Christmas and  Happy New Year!!