Escape From Chicago...
I am a little late in delivering my customary post about whatever problems I had traveling to and from the latest conference.
It's pretty well established that I don't particularly enjoy traveling. I just have a hard time with it. For starters, I share a name with a celebrity (Michael McDonald - think Doobie Brothers). As such, I am on the 'no-fly' list. This entitles me to, among other things, the inability to express check in at kiosks, being pulled to the side for 'random' personal searches, and having my luggage locks broken as they sift thru my checked bags for contraband.
Other than that, I just don't have good luck in general as far as airports are concerned. This held up yet again last week as we tried to get out of Chicago after the Search Engine Strategies conference. We left our hotel extra early at 2pm to make our 6pm flight. As we arrived at O'Hare it was just starting to spit a little snow. As we sat in the airport, it started to snow more... and more... and more.
Within a few hours the little snow had turned into a lot of snow. Our flight was bumped from gate to gate a few times and finally cancelled (along with about 400 other flights). Of course by this point all of the hotels near the airport were filled and our only options were to sleep in the terminal or get back to the Chicago Hilton where we'd been staying, which was fine except for the fact that it was about a 45 minute cab ride from the airport. Of course the wait time for cabs out of the airport by that point was something in the 3 hour range.
At any rate, I rebooked and got the last seat on the 8am Friday flight back to Lexington and we took the L Train back into the city and walked several blocks from the nearest station to the Hilton. It wasn't much fun.
I decided for my 8am flight I was going to leave the hotel at 4am. That only left me with about a 2-3 hour window for sleeping, but I didn't really care at that point. I just wanted to go home. So 4am came, I got a cab no problem and zipped right to the airport. Bounced from gate to gate for a while and finally got out of there (after about 3 hour delay) at 11am.
Lexington was cold and gray. The same storm that had dumped all of the snow on Chicago had been through Lexington a day or two earlier and, as usual, left us ice instead of snow. It had been long enough for the roads to get cleared up though so I pretty much had it made and was only about 15 minutes from home. On the way home, I stopped at a gas station to buy some smokes. They were $8 per pack at the hotel and I was really stoked about getting 3 packs for about that price when I got back to KY.
Unfortunately, though the roads were largely cleared of ice, the same couldn't be said of the gas station parking lot. As I was walking back to my car I slipped on some ice and fell on one of those concrete things they put in the front of the parking spots. I'm sure it was funny to see, but it also hurt like hell. Turns out, I ended up breaking a couple of ribs in that little spill. For those of you who have never had broken ribs, I can assure you that having broken ribs really really sucks. A perfect ending to another travel experience.
So I eventually managed to get in my car and get the rest of the way home. All in all, despite the bad weather and travel problems, the conference was fun (it was nice to finally meet Brianmark) and Chicago is a cool city (next time I'll go in the summertime). Hope to see some of you guys in March when SES hits New York, my ribs should be pretty well fixed by then maybe.
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