Flying In and Flying Out

This weekend was supposed to be my mundane period, but as usual a few things popped up to interrupt a slow weekend. The only things I had planned was a day off on Friday to pick up Jeanne from the airport and take her back to it, I will explain soon enough. And on Saturday a couple friends were getting together for a wine party. I thought I would leave Sunday open to install my new A/C parts. For the most part all of this occurred, but with a twist.

Jeanne was scheduled to come in at 6:03am. We have picked each other up enough from the airport to know our routine. We wait for the person coming in to call and notify the other one when to come to arrivals. The D.C. airport police are religious at making people move if they are not picking anyone up. So I have a parking lot that I usually wait in while I wait for a call. Well, 6:30am came up quickly and I had not heard anything from her, so I decided to patrol arrivals anyhow. No Jeanne.

It's 6:40am now and I figured I probably should go in to see where she is or if the flight was delayed. I parked in short term parking which requires a lien out on your house, or life, in order to afford it. It's creeping up to 7:00am now and I am annoyed, hungry, and ready to go back to bed. :)

So, I figured I would go down to baggage claim to see if her flight was delayed. The digital display that shows when the flight gets in and what baggage claim belt showed that the arrival of the flight was on time. Furthermore, when I checked the belt her flight was cleared from the baggage claim belt. Now I am worried, frustrated, hungry, and angry at the same time. I spoke with a United rep and they confirmed that the flight was actually delayed and arrived at 6:26am, BUT it was already 7:10am, which means she's been off the plane for a while. URGH. Nothing like $$$ fig newtons from the airport to put me in a better mood. ;)

As I was about to scout out the arrival deck again, I got "the" call. However, my service, or phone, sucks and being in the airport doesn't help. I didn't get to talk to her, but I did hear a very frustrated, angry, irritated voice on the voicemail. Her phone died on her, so she couldn't give me a call when she landed. haha. As worried, frustrated, hungry, and angry I was, knowing that she is feeling the same way kind of made the situation better. I don't know why, but I knew she was going through the same feelings that I was. We just needed to find each other and move on with the busy day.

After a couple of pay phone calls, we linked up and were on our way at 7:30am. So, about an hour and a half at the airport my morning started just fine.

In retrospect, it wasn't all that bad, because the rest of the day squashed any bad memory of that moment. We seem to be able to move past stupid stuff like that very quickly. We have more important things to focus on like McDonald's Egg McMuffins to make things all better. I swear they put happy powder in their food.

Well, the crazy thing of it all is that she only had a few hours to re-pack and get on another set of flights to go to Spain! That's a nutty schedule. So, we rushed to get some errands done and she finished packing. We had to get going quickly because we only had an 1 1/2 hours to her flight and it takes 30 minutes to get to the airport, which means she only has an hour to clear security and get to her gate. This is normally not accepted for international flights.

As we started heading down to the garage, we needed to make a crucial decision. Take my car, with about 40 miles left in the tank or take her car? You would think this is a very easy question to answer. Let me add to it. My A/C parts were waiting for me at the shop and the shop is right next to the airport. hmmmm, dilemmas. Well, I know my gas levels very well, so I decided to risk it and get some gas after I dropped her off. I knew that I could get her to the airport.

We sped the whole way to the airport with my car on E. It was straight out of a movie...sort of. The airport is in view now as we come over the last bend, but my car stops responding to my lead foot. The car starts to slow down as if my pedal was in a bucket of tar and this unstoppable force was pushing against the front of my car. It's amazing the panic that sets in when you are running out of gas. I felt like I was in the last minutes of a 24 season finale.

Jeanne looked over at me as if to say, "I have to make it and if that means getting out of this car at 30 mph by jumping on to a passing cab, I will do it."

My car continued to buck like a wild horse for a good quarter mile while I had my flashers on to let people know that they shouldn't get close in case this beast blew up. Fortunately, the fuel pump did its job and found the last gulp of fuel in the tank and forced it into the injectors. The car lurched forward with enough force that I knew I had to gun it now before we ran out of gas. We didn't say anything for the last 2 minutes as we eagerly anticipated our sputtered arrival into departures.

Sure, enough, we made it to the Delta gate with my car saying, "That's it, I am almost ready to quit." Coughing and choking due to the trickle of fuel going into the cylinders while we said our goodbyes, I felt somewhat victorious. I did what I set out to do and that was get her to the airport. Needless to say, I am sure she could have done without the extra drama. :)

Now, it was time for me to get out of the airport and find a gas station. As I started to leave the departure ramp, it was clear that I wasn't going to make it very far. In fact, I didn't make it out of the airport. I managed to coast to the side of the road. I used as much gas as my 18 year old fuel pump would find in the tank. An hour under the trees, a couple of conversations with the patrolling airport police and one tow to a gas station later and my day was finally coming to a close.

The rest of the weekend went by at a perfect pace. The wine party was a lot of fun and my A/C parts are finally installed. I finished off my weekend with an hour by the pool and a couple of chapters of "Choke."

Nothing like a good blend of the mundane and sporadic dramatic.