My itinerary was simple -
Friday: Calgary --> Dallas. Wait an hour. Dallas --> Memphis.
then,
Sunday: Memphis --> Chicago. Wait an hour and a half. Chicago --> Calgary.
SOUNDS EASY, RIGHT?
It took an hour and a half to de-ice the Calgary aircraft (it was minus 15 F outside). They sprayed the entire plane down with fluorescent green goo. Why they didn't bother to do this before we boarded still remains a mystery to me.
I missed my connecting flight to Memphis but got put in a suite at the Grand Hyatt, which was on the whole, a splendid event. I slept for 12 hours and pranced around in a terry cloth bathrobe like a boss. Next morning's flight from Dallas to Memphis was the only successful leg of the trip. I talked to the cute guy sitting next to me (mmm Southern drawl yes please!), sipped apple juice, and actually arrived in Memphis ahead of schedule.
Memphis International Airport is not a very happenin' place.
I spent the next 23 hours frolicking about Memphis, Tennessee and Helena, Arkansas with Kaitlyn. We shopped like old times, ate like old times, and did our makeup while blasting Taylor Swift like old, old, gloriously old times. I had not seen her in half a year but it felt like nothing had changed since our Chicagoan days.
At night, we headed over to Beale Street, the Memphis equivalent of Bourbon Street, to go bar-hopping. We were having a good time until we encountered something really fucked up at Club 152: our elevator stopped at the second floor and we saw that it was blocked off by chairs and guarded by a large bouncer. He took one look at us and told us that we should keep going up to the third floor. Kaitlyn asked him what the chairs were for. And I quote, verbatim:
"To keep the blacks from crowding the elevator and going up."
We were stunned. Kaitlyn asked him to repeat what he said, and he did.
"So this is a segregated bar, then."
"No, it's just an invitation-only area on the third floor, where you should be."
What invitations?!#@#!@#$!
Both Kaitlyn and I were flabbergasted and repulsed by what we'd seen, so we called it a night and drove back to Helena to catch some shut-eye. The next morning we had pancakes at her friends' place. I was only there for an hour but there was something so therapeutic about sitting in a warm house in the middle of nowhere and being surrounded by kind, gracious people. There was a huge window where we ate and the view was framed by a stream of drifting orange leaves...it was all so surreal. I so felt like Reese Witherspoon in Sweet Home Alabama, except with a hangover.
It was all downhill after I was dropped off at the airport. I walked to ticketing to check in and informed the United representative that I was going to O'Hare International Airport.
"O'Hare? Your plane is already here! RUN FORREST RUN!!!!!!"
She didn't say that last part, but it was all I was thinking as I rocketed through security, shoving innocent and bewildered peasants left and right. I rounded the corner to my gate and to my relief, stepped into a line of passengers still waiting to board. When I got to the front, the ticket collector looked at me and raised an eyebrow.
"You're going to O'Hare, miss. This flight is boarding for Denver."
Apparently United lady number one thought O'Hare was in Denver.
I popped a squat and waited for about 45 minutes for the real aircraft to O'Hare to arrive. Then, the intercom told me that the flight would be delayed by exactly one hour.
One hour isn't so bad. I still have a thirty minute window, I thought as I started a new game of chess against the computer.
Turns out, airplanes follow a very rigid takeoff schedule, and there exists only about a 10 or 15 minute window for each plane to leave the runway. Our flight missed its window and another one was unavailable for 30 more minutes. And thus my last ounce of hope was squeezed out of me, similar to the way that last toothbrushful of toothpaste is pried out, used, and spat out. My flight touched down exactly four minutes after my connection had taken off.
I needed to be in Calgary the next morning for an important meeting. I absolutely, positively, unequivocally had to be there. My only option was to take a 8:25 PM flight to Edmonton, which is about an hour north of Calgary, stay the night, and take the 5:40 AM flight from Edmonton to Calgary the next morning.
The Edmonton flight was delayed by an hour. At this point I had, in all probability, gone insane. I wandered around O'Hare with a giant thing of McDonald's fries, walking around listlessly and with no purpose in life anymore. I was in airport purgatory. During the four hours I spend there waiting, I managed to: 1.) buy a pair of Ray-Bans, completely on impuse, 2.) eat an extra large McDonald's meal, and 3.) bond with strangers from Australia, who invited me to play poker with them.
9:25 finally rolled around and I was finally on an aircraft. I sat next to a legal assistant named Wlad, who when asked what there was to do in Edmonton for fun, had to think for about five minutes before offering a couple of responses. I arrived in Edmonton at 1:00 AM, got to my hotel at 1:30, took a shower, crawled into bed (practically weeping) at 2:00, and woke up two hours later to catch the 4:30 shuttle to the airport. So essentially, I paid a hundred bucks for a quick shower and nap.
The Edmonton --> Calgary flight was only delayed by 30 minutes (you know your life is sad when a 30-minute delay is now prefaced with "only") so I got to Calgary around 7:20, hailed a taxi, and drove straight to the office - disheveled, luggage in tow, but present and ready and willing, huzzah!
