Waiting, or I couldn't Think of Anything Clever: Part Three

We pulled in line behind several jets, the pilot came on the overhead and told us that we were 7th in line; something to do with the warm weather, traffic at O'hare, storms out west, and some other shit made it so that at the moment no westbound planes were being allowed to take-off. She would keep us updated. They were so nice as to allow us to watch tv for free while we waited! I'm not sure how to express the slow passage of time, I guess you'll just have to imagine waiting on a plane unless you've been through it. A few hours later she announced that they were letting one plane take-off as a test to see how the weather was. An hour of so she reported that everything has being shut down and we were going to taxi back to the terminal to rest and get gas...they had never heard back from the test flight. i personally was wondering why a search party wasn't being sent out. Once back at the terminal we were told that we were were allowed but highly encouraged not to exit the airplane as any small opening in the storm system would be used to take off...hooray for us though, we were allowed to walk the jetway. As it had been almost five hours i thought i would try to rally some support for ordering pizza to be delivered to the plane. This proved not to be possible, there was plenty of support, but the security was worried we'd order exploding pepperoni or box-cutter bread sticks. The pilot told us that we was working as hard as she could at getting us some food (she failed) and the person at the gate (who was not sympathetic) told us ever three minutes about how we should not get off the plane, and how we would not be paid for a hotel in Denver, and how if we did choose to get off this flight we'd have to wait till thursday to get a new one. She ended every message with, "oh yeah, f#@k you." Not true.

Eventually they rushed us all onto the plane and said that another guinea pig (i swear that's what they called it) had been allowed to take-off. We waited for another hour and finally took off ourselves. I believe it was 8:30. The beginning of the flight was by far the worst turbulence I have ever experienced. I didn't really notice it too much till I realized I couldn't hold my book steady enough to keep reading. I looked across the aisle at a girl who was shaking violently and ready to burst into tears. I couldn't help but thing that she should save some distress for if anything did go wrong. If our engines gave out or wing fell off, she would have been unable to step her hysteria up a notch. We finally cleared the the clouds and the flight normal into Denver.

I spoke with the flight agent and of course, there were no flights to Seattle at 930 at night, thus the airport would be my home away from home. After purposely staying in a few airports in Europe i realized how awful an experience it is and swore never again. I also have said after each time I will never do a repair job for dad, but thus is life.

End of Part Three.