Transportation Woes

I like to call them Toes. Prepare yourself, this is sort of long...

So DH and I take the train to and from work. It's generally not that big of a deal, because we get to save on gas and don't have to fight traffic or pay for parking (both REALLY great things).

However, with the record breaking cold we had the week prior to our leaving Chicago for Utah (it was warmer at the North Pole, btw), riding the train became increasingly difficult. On Wednesday, the 14th. I got out early. I was going to get home and maybe do a load of laundry and start packing. It was going to be great. I arrived at Union Station to find a sea of people milling about the tracks. It sort of reminded me of those pictures you see of the corrals in denver with all the cows. It was kind of like that.

I call DH and I'm like, hey, you should leave early and so should your boss. Our train line is NOT working!!!

It turns out that metal, when left in sub-zero, frigid temperatures doesn't work as well as we humans would like it to. So Amtrak (which also uses our tracks) tried to get into Union Station and lo and behold, the metal switches that allow trains to "switch" from one track to another stuck. The train derailed (no injuries) and shut down ALL THREE TRACKS for the rest of the evening.

I live off one of the busiest lines leaving chicago and so for our track to not work delays 10,000+ people PER COMMUTE and pushes all those people to other train lines or other forms of transportation. It is not pretty.

So I head to the OTHER train station that we have here in chicago and find a line that will take us mostly close to home and if we hurry, we might actually get a seat!

Now, normally, this is bad enough, but because DH and I both work downtown, we have another transportation dilemna once we depart from this alternate line. We are then stuck at the train station with no way to get home...

For this, I would like to thank my Mom. She came and picked us up with ultra heavy traffic and the fact that she was having the LDS missionaries over for dinner that night! My brother stayed home and finished dinner and played host while my mom spent over an hour of her life driving to the middle of some super packed, podunk little town to pick us up and then drop us off at our house which is in no way close to where she needed to go. So...Thanks, Mom. I don't know what we are going to do when you move to Cleveland!

So, with us leaving for Utah that friday, we are thinking, geez - one more day and then we are SO out of here!

Please remember bad things generally come in threes.

On Thursday night, we are completely packed and ready to go. My mom, once again, is saving the day and driving us to the airport at 4:00 Friday morning so we are sleeping at her place to make it easier. We leave our apartment and start driving to my parents house when DH notices this odd thumping noise.

We stop at a parking lot and yep...we have a flat tire. Please remember, it's like 20 below. DH stays out in the cold to change the tire and I go inside the store to shop and whatever. DH's out there for like 20 mintues and I'm trying to figure out what's going on. When we finally reconnect, he tells me that he couldn't get the tire off. It was frozen on! Some good samaritan took pity on him, grabbed our spare tire and proceeded to throw it at the frozen tire. That was the only thing that got it off. :)

So, DH was freezing and couldn't feel his fingers or toes or really most of his legs, but we made it to my parents house and my mom (our savior once again) said she's take our car in to get the tires fixed while we were gone.

And Finally...

We get up on Friday morning and load the car. As we're driving the temperature is -18 (without windchill) and so we were VERY cold for a VERY long time until the car warmed up.

We get to the airport and check our bags, no big deal. Very typical airport stuff. We shoot through security and find our gate, nbd. We are sitting there, waiting to board and they finally open the gates. They call the first zone (we're on Delta) and then stop them before they can board. Something seems to be wrong...

Apparently the emergency lights didn't work. Our crew was working to fix it, but then 30 minutes later they mention something about how they won't work because it's too cold. (It get's better)

We're on the north side of the tarmac and there are no buildings to block the wind from the rest of the runways. It finally comes out that some genius at O'Hare thought it would be a good idea to leave the plane out.overnight.in record breakingly cold weather.

Essentially, we weren't boarding a plane, we were boarding a plane shaped block of ice with a metal frame. About an hour after we were supposed to leave our gate attendant got on the PA and very proudly explained that they got the emergency lights situation fixed! Almost as an afterthough, he added that we still won't be boarding because the plane needs to be de-iced and that can't happen until someone de-iced the de-icing trucks.

Go ahead, you may need a minute to think that one through.

My guess, is that the same brain trust that thought it would be a good idea to park a plane outside, also thought to leave the de-icing trucks out in the same weather.

Finally, we board the plane. It's almost two hours late for departure, but at least everyone was already there and waiting to board.

Ok. This is REALLY long. Congrats on reading that. Now drink some hot cocoa and wrap yourself in a blanket, because that made me cold just writing it!