Amy's Blog

I hurried out of work at 4:00 last Thursday afternoon so that I could get to the airport for a 6:00 flight.  The sky was gray, but didn’t look bad.  I hopped on the highway and turned on the local talk radio station to hear that there were tornado and severe thunder storm watches all across the metro, including in areas along I-635 and I-29, my usual route to the airport from the office.  The talk show hosts were telling people to take cover.  I kept driving.  A guy texted into the radio station and said “I’m in my basement because I’m not a GD  moron!” I thought to myself, “I’m not a GD moron, I’m in a hurry and have a flight to catch!”

I kept driving and the farther north that I drove, the darker and scarier the sky looked.  I had been in the car for about twenty minutes when I heard that the airport had been evacuated because there was a tornado spotted minutes away. All that I could think about was my little car getting sucked off of the freeway into a tornado.   I finally got freaked out enough to pull over at the next exit and found a parking garage in a mixed-use development to wait it out.  The tornado watch expired and the airport was open again, so I got back on the road again!

The sky was still black and scary, but I thought, I can survive another twenty minutes in the car.  Rain started pouring down in sheets, and hail started beating down on the roof of my car.  By this point I wasn’t yet afraid for my safety, I was scared that my poor little car would be all beaten up! The rain got so bad that I couldn’t see and I started driving 20 miles an hour while saying a few Hail Marys just praying that I wouldn’t hit or be hit.  I couldn’t pull over because I couldn’t see the side of the road.  I’ve never driven through anything like it.

I FINALLY made it to the airport and after driving around the parking garage for 20 minutes, I found a covered spot for my car.  I checked the airline app and it said that my flight was still on time.  I knew if I hustled, I could make it through security in plenty of time to board.  I had NO idea that I was about to walk into a line of about 6,000 people all waiting to get through security.  These were all of the people who had already made it through security before the tornado, but had to be rechecked after the evacuation.

People kept cutting in front of me to get to other lines, and I was so angry.  Obviously that made no sense because they weren’t doing anything wrong.  And everything about this situation was  out of my control, so I had no choice but to just go with the flow. So why was I wasting all of that energy? Beats me! I ran into some friends from high school who were trying to catch a flight to Arizona.  And then I started making friends in line.  After about 90 minutes in the security line and a random airport employee trying to convince me that my flight had been cancelled, I made it through to the other side! I checked at the gate and my flight was delayed for an hour, which didn’t seem so bad.

I ran into my line friends, some trying to get to Tampa, some to Denver, Albuquerque, Chicago, Nashville, and who knows where else, at the hotel bar.  Well, it was more like a kiosk with a couple of stools and a cash register.  It couldn’t have been a real bar because when I asked for sparkling wine, the bartender said, “we don’t have wine, but we have champagne.” Then he proceeds to serve me sparkling wine…Turns out, the 6,000 people from the security line ended up at the bar/beer kiosk! However, at the time, I had no idea that there was a line and ended up walking right up to the front where my new friends had found stools and cut in front of about 60-70 people.  Ooops!

I ended up telling my life story to some guy named Turner, and made some new friends who live in Westport that I’m going to meet up with when they return from vacation in Florida.  Before I knew it, I realized that my crappy, energy wasting mood had turned into a cheery, happy, and optimistic attitude.  I didn’t seem too stressed when my one hour delay turned into two hours, then three, then we were finally in the air four hours after the regularly scheduled departure!  I ended up missing my connection and wasn’t able to get a flight to my final destination until 4:30 the next afternoon,

Gotta love severe weather in the Midwest!