Tarmac Tales

We all have those flights. The ones where you clap when you take off and then when you land. One day after graduation and I am headed to New York for our capstone project presentation. It is exciting but I also really want to nap and figure out the rest of my life. It is a cold blustery day. I decide to take a bus and the train instead of a SuperShuttle to economize as an unemployed student. My suitcase almost gets blown away on the street, my hair is whipped into a tangled frenzy. 'Summer' in Minneapolis is here.



We take off on time from Minneapolis. Close to Atlanta the pilot announces that they are being made to circle due to traffic and only have 20 minutes of fuel and we may land in Birmingham instead. Luckily, we land in Atlanta. My next flight out is at 4:30 pm and for the next hour we get lots of contradictory information about how it has been delayed to 10:30 pm and 5:30 pm. Finally the staff tell us, depending on the weather, they are going to try and get us out of there as soon as possible. There are storms on the East Coast. One particularly charming gentleman is loudly invoking the Lord and saying this is because of the Lord. He goes and makes obnoxious conversation at the helpful airline staff who are doing their best to figure what is going on and then tells them he will pray for them.

We finally get on the flight. We sit in the flight for an hour. It starts to get really warm (I want to say they said they were trying to conserve fuel). Then the plane moves to the take-off area. We are 25th in the queue to fly out. We sit there some more. The weather goes from sunny to super rainy and there are lightning bolts. We are told to sit down and the plane goes back to the boarding gate. The sun shines almost as soon as we get back. The captain says the plane is getting a 'fuel uplift'. At this point they decide to let people walk to the terminal to get food (good call but very chaotic). This goes on for an hour and then some. Finally we all get back in, the flight isn't cancelled, we head back for take-off. This goes on for ANOTHER hour. At this point, I drift to sleep and only wake up to hear the captain say this has never happened in this 30-year career (the number of changes in our plan).

One girl insists the weather is JUST fine and she can see it in her app and does some name-calling. But even though people got antsy, it was such a a well-behaved flight. We clap when we take-off.
I try to sleep the entire flight and listen to lots of On Being in the background.

On arrival we learn that the landing strip is kind of crowded to so we just hang around for a while. People joke about opening the emergency exits to get out. At this point, it has become a little bit of a joke. Finally we deboard. I wait for my luggage and get into the taxi queue. It has at least 60 people, no jokes here. New York. I find a Dahli-boy cab driver who proceeds to ask me tons of questions: where am I from? Where exactly do I live in Delhi? Where do I live in Minneapolis? Do I live with boys (salaciously)? Am I married? Gives advice that I should get married to get residency. Then tells me Indians don't live in Brooklyn. Basically he talks and creeps me out the entire way and at midnight, I acknowledged that this wasn't my day and was thankful that I had woken up with my zen cap. I get to my friend's house and proceed to sleep in this morning. Hopefully the flight back will be less adventurous.