Travel Horror Continues

So, stranded in London for 3 hours and i took the next available flight to Chicago. As expected this time, reached Chicago late and missed the connection to New Orleans. The worst came after that, there were no more flights to New Orleans that day.

They gave me a hotel accommodation and a ticket to the flight to New Orleans next evening at 9 PM. So, I lug around with all my luggage and try to find the Hilton hotel. It is when i stepped in to the open, i realized how bad it is going to be. It was freezing cold and i had no winter clothes.

Thankfully Hilton was right across the terminal gate but the cold was good enough to almost get my fingers frozen like frozen fries. The next good news was that i had to vacate the hotel at 1 in the afternoon and my flight at 9. I thought about 8 god-knows-what-to-do hours. Did not feel any good with that cold weather. So i did what i could do best, got a couple of drinks at the restaurant, had my dinner and hit the sack.

The next morning i found that there was a flight to New Orleans. But the time i found that out was about an hour before the flight. Here is the deal the ticketing executive gave me

“There are 2 flights to New Orleans in the morning. One at 10 and the other at 1. I will book you in on the flight at 10 but you may or may not be confirmed. If you are not confirmed, you will have to take the next flight but your luggage would be sent in the first flight. You can go to New Orleans and pick it up.”

I thought long and hard for half-a-minute and the cold weather outside made the choice. I bought the ticket. The next thing the ticketing executive had to say was “you got 10 minutes to go and get your luggage for check in”. Whew…this country was killing me. I ran (well, i actually did) and walked as fast as i can to check out and get my luggage. It took exactly 15 minutes for me to bring the luggage and 15 minutes to catch attention of the executive who blocked the ticket for me.

Thankfully she checked in my luggage and even better my ticket had been confirmed by the time i reached the gate. That was the first best thing to have happened since i left Chennai and it seriously felt good.

That's one of the remarkable things about life. It's never so bad that it can't get worse. – Calvin :)