planes, buses, and automobiles

Not too far back, I had to travel out to Wisconsin to attend a family funeral. I needed to find plane tickets short notice (as in.. next day). Talk about expensive.

So, I got a pair of tickets (for my wife and I), and the next day we were on our way. We drove about 2 hours to the airport, then hopped a plane. The plane connected through Minneapolis/St. Paul airport.

When we arrived at the airport, we got something to eat, and proceeded to our departure gate to wait until our flight (something like 3 hours away). While we sat there, I heard something over the airport PA system. Amidst what sounded like a ferret fighting his way out of a plastic bag, I made out some words about our flight. I went to a ticket agent to ask what was going on.

Apparently all the earlier flights to the airport we were destined to were canceled. Great.
There was one flight later on (ours) that they thought would be canceled as well. We were told that if we ran to the other end of the airport, they had a bus loaded with the people from the earlier cancellations. That bus was destined for the airport that the planes could not fly in to (due to weather and landing conditions).

So, run we did. We made it to the gate, and proceeded to walk down the little chute that normally connects to a plane. We came to the end, and it was just open air..with some stairs attached. We went down the stairs and got onto a bus.

It was a bit surreal getting onto a bus on the tarmac, with planes taxiing all over the place. We seated ourselves, and soon we were off. We had an airport security pace car leading us around planes, and over parts of the runway. Very strange riding on a bus on the runway. A first for me certainly.

We "taxied" out of the airport, and got on the highway. Things were fine for a couple of hours. Then we ran into the storm that hadn't allowed the planes to land. The rain was coming down with such ferocity, that the bus driver had to slow down because he couldn't see very well. The wipers couldn't keep up.

Great flashes of light, and I could see huge lightning forks through my bus seat window. The thunder was rumbling so loudly, that I could feel it in vibrating my bus seat. I reflected for a moment. It was certainly odd to think of how I had come to that present situation. I had started out on a plane, and ended up riding a bus through a monster of a storm, rolling through the Wisconsin country side. I was reminded of the movie "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles". Then it started to hail....

After about an hour or so..the storm lessened. I guess we had finally driven through the storm. We got to the airport, and it just so happened that the later plane (the one we had been scheduled on) had actually landed...10 minutes before our bus arrived. WTF!?

At least we made it there in one piece. A special thanks to the bus driver. Good driving through that storm.