drive, i must

I thought that I had a nice little ending there written on the plane not a complete circle but hinting at it.

It seems that it wasn’t symmetrical enough.

After arriving in Newark, walking down an endless corridor that would do the old Terminal one at Pearson’s proud. I was greeted by a surly immigration officer welcoming me back.

Sod off.

Drag my stuff through security again when the film causes a problem, try to find something to eat, have a large chai in which there is an inch gap between the liquid and the top of the cup. I ask.

-no that is a large with chai.

Welcome back indeed.

The plane leaves late, it seems that a plane has slid off the runway due to the snow in Milwaukee and they haven’t bothered to plough the other runway. We couldn’t leave until we could land. The plane was full off up-talking girls from Carthage College back from Eire.

A half hour later the plane leaves saying that the runway is clear. It is a two hour flight.

A two hour flight.

For some reason we have exceptionally strong headwind and an hour into the flight we still have two to go. It seems that the crew have a bad time estimating time.

Over Western Michigan everyone notices that we are constantly circling. The air hostess who at one time I am sure had hopes of being Miss West Texas after a career in cheerleading with her bubbly demeanour and free use of darling, states that the pilots are busy right now and had asked her to tell us that we cannot land as it has snowed in Milwaukee and the runways are closed. We were running out of fuel so we are going to Midway Airport to refuel and then head up to Milwaukee. We’ll be in Chicago in about 15 minutes. 45 minutes later we land. Remember we are running out of fuel we were 30 minutes from Milwaukee when we were told and it takes she underestimates the time it will take to get on the ground. Not particularly assuaging.

It is snowing, but the planes are arriving and departing with little or no problem. It seems that the airport knows about these things called snow ploughs.

Some of the people have Chicago as their final destination, can they leave? Ms perky consults the ground crew, yes but the baggage goes to Milwaukee, there will be no taxi or travel vouchers. She then hands out more bags of peanut “pretend they are hamburgers”. Most turn them down.

The pilots now refuse to talk to the passengers, Miss West Texas now says that we should be airborne in 15 minutes as they have just finished refuelling. I look out my window to see the refuelling truck only now attaching the hose to the plane.

45 minutes later she says that those who want to deplane in Chicago should do so now as we are leaving the gate in 5 minutes – 25 minutes later the door to the plane is shut.

We taxi to the runway in which she estimates that we will be in the air by 6PM. 6:15 we leave the ground.

The runways of Midway are wet but clear. I can see the grooved pavement. There are ploughs everywhere. Milwaukee’s airport looked like Iqualuit , Nunavut. If they were ploughed you could have fooled me. The plane skidded when it touched down.

Derisive applause. Not a peep from the pilots.

I had just left – well sometime in the recent past – St. John’s International Airport - YYT – reportedly the windiest airport in North America. There was a snow but the plane left on a runway relatively clear.

Milwaukee seemed to have been caught off guard – even though from what I hear the snow had bee predicted – and didn’t bother to try to clear the runways, landing the airport was as empty of snow clearing equipment as Chicago was full of it.

Continental was equally as bad by having the cheerleader stewardess be a foil for the pilots who simply couldn’t be bothered.

Come July I want to drive.