In the epic Arthurian quests of old, the goal was not
primarily the destination, but the journey, the refining of the soul that
happens as the heat of adversity, detours, and distractions burn away the dross
and leaves behind a purer metal.
Last week was a quest of Arthurian scale, recast in modern
times. While I strove to keep the length of this blog less epic than the scale of the adventure it tells, I both petition your reading endurance, and invite you along for this most curious of journeys.
It all began with a seemingly innocuous goal: getting to
London for a 3-day business meeting marathon.
Chapter 1: The Home Front
Leaving an 8 month old and 2 ½ year old isn’t the easiest of
tasks, but with sufficient prior planning can be accomplished. Having lined up
my husband and mom to help cover everything while I was out, we hit Snag #1
when the Thursday before my Monday departure my husband threw out his back. Not
a “I have a slight twinge when I do a back handspring” but a “lying flat on the
office parking lot asphalt because my back has frozen and I can’t move” sort of
throwing out. Obviously this means no lifting kids. Obviously this is therefore
a problem when said young kids require constant lifting for diaper changes,
carseats, and cribs. Solution: Move husband and kids to my parents’ house for
the weekend in preparation for Snag #2: snowzilla.
Richmond occasionally gets snow, and its predicted coming
creates a frenzied atmosphere in grocery and hardware stores where shelves are
pillaged of bread, milk, shovels, and sleds. To those in the northeast and Midwest,
this curious stampeding for staples is a strange but rather endearing oddity;
for those who experience Richmond snow – and the phenomenon that is roads
untouched by a plow for many days – the phenomenon is less appealing. The city
got 14-16 inches over the weekend, one of our largest snowfalls in memory. This
would be a welcome chance to hunker down inside (for a short period at least –
more than 72 hours cooped up with a baby and toddler will cause even the
sturdiest of souls to adopt a twitch), except for said requirement of actually
getting out of Richmond in order to land in London. This leads to:
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The snow is falling... |
Initial plan status: straightforward. Drive from parents’
house to my house to get passport. Drive from my house downtown to meet
colleague (Kathryn). Drive together in rental car to flight out of Dulles.
Snowzilla means that only one runway is operating, but google claims our flight
is on time, so plans proceed.
Snag #3: Approximately 100 feet out of parents’ driveway, I
get stuck. Like, stuck stuck. Shovel the tires, get help from passerby good Samaritans
stuck. We finally dig out, I go another 200 feet and get stuck again. Repeat
process with shoveling, pushing, and good Samaritans. Go another 200 feet and
get stuck a third time. Decide this is for the birds, utilize more shoveling,
pushing, and good Samaritans to try to get car back into said driveway where
everything started 60 sweaty minutes ago. Call Kathryn and ask her husband to
come pick me up in their 4 wheel drive truck.
Snag #4: Arrive in said 4 wheel drive truck at my house (30
mins away) and realize that I have forgotten my house key. Imagine banging my
head repeatedly against side of 4 wheel drive truck. Tromp around house trying
to figure out if we have a window or door unlocked – which of course we do not.
Happily (in an odd way), Kathryn’s husband announces that if I can find a metal
coat hanger, he can easily pop the latch on our garage door to get it open.
While this permanently undermines my sense of safety (we now lock the door
between the house and the garage), I beg a coat hanger from our neighbors (who
are very confused but comply), and pop! We’re in the house.
Finally! My jeans are wet from shin-high snow, I’m sweaty
from shoveling, my socks are damp, but I have my passport and I’m in a moving
vehicle. Things must start to go our way, right?
Snag #5: Kathryn and I meet at her house, and after getting
the rental car unstuck a time or two (thank the Lord for the profusion of good
Samaritans around the city), we begin the 2 hour drive up to Dulles Airport. We
stop an hour later at Wawa to get lunch,
only to have another helpful passerby point out, “Oh, did you notice your front
tire is basically flat?” Why no, we had not. Thank you, Wawa, for free air –
though having an air pump with a pressure gauge that actually worked would have
been marginally more helpful. We fill up the tire until it looks even-ish with
the other ones, hit the road again.
Snag #6: An hour and 40 minutes into our drive to Dulles, I
applaud Kathryn on having a husband so handy in a pinch, since otherwise my
passport would be stranded inside my house, and she turns to me with a stricken
look and says “Passport. I forgot my passport.” Surely she’s joking, I think.
But she is not. She calls her husband (who is watching their 6 small kids), he
gets her passport, hops in the car and starts driving towards us. With
absolutely no traffic, he MIGHT make it in time for us to get our flight. We
decide to try. After dropping off our rental car (and waiting for a new shuttle
bus when the first one got stuck in the snow), I go through security and wait
at the gate. Kathryn hovers, waiting for her husband’s passport delivery.
Thanks to her sprained ankle boot, they let her go through the (line-less) handicapped security line, and she arrives at the gate with literally moments to spare. I check the mirror and find out that while I suspect my hair has gone completely gray, it is in fact – surprisingly – still brown.
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Stuck in the snow... |
Thanks to her sprained ankle boot, they let her go through the (line-less) handicapped security line, and she arrives at the gate with literally moments to spare. I check the mirror and find out that while I suspect my hair has gone completely gray, it is in fact – surprisingly – still brown.
Snag #7: Having boarded the plan, we sit on the runway and I
see Kathryn looking at Air BnB postings in London. Since we were both so sure
that the plane would never leave (Dulles only had one of four runways open,
most flights were cancelled), we hadn’t booked a place to stay. You know, for
when we landed. In 7 hours. Kathryn clicks the “book” button, we pray the owner
will check her Airbnb messages before we land at 6am and away we go.
Landing in London 7 hours later, still wearing damp socks,
we breathe deeply the London air, take a sigh of relief to note the Airbnb owner
accepted our booking, stop by British Airways lost and found to retrieve the
coat Kathryn left on the plane, and finally make it to Clapham, our corner of
London.
Somewhat brain-dead from a packed few days of meeting
marathons, Kathryn & I trundle into an Uber to head to the airport. Having
flown out on British Airways, we go back to the BA terminal, go to check in and
realize simultaneously A) we were actually on American Airlines going home
(wrong terminal) and B) Kathryn’s phone fell out in the Uber car. By using airport
wifi to Skype the Uber car driver from the airport lobby via Kathryn's laptop (since my phone won't connect) we get Uber guy to agree
to come back. And we then hop on the London Underground to (eventually) get to
the right terminal. Since the Uber guy can't drive us unless we book him on the app which we can't connect to anyway since we're standing outside without Wifi. Right.
True to stereotype, the American plane is basically a flying
tin can from circa 1980. Each seat does have a screen, but there are no
on-demand movies, just a couple looping options that sporadically stutter,
start over, or randomly turn off. Since we are alive and on a moving vehicle,
we take this in stride.
Landing in New York at 9PM (2 am body clock time for us), it
becomes quickly apparent that we are late enough to miss our connection. This
is an issue A) because it was the last flight out, and we’re now stuck
overnight in the purgatory-like ambiance that is JFK airport and B) because
Kathryn had her son’s birthday party and daughter’s school party the next
morning she needed to get back to. We consider taking an Amtrak train, renting
a car, or taking the Chinatown cheap-o bus, none of which work out – for a
variety of reasons I will spare you the details of.
Fine. Having gotten through and survived to Snag #
8,342,174, this can’t daunt us. Except we’re exhausted. And JFK airport is like
a third world country. And right before our flight, a flight to Buenos Aires
got cancelled, which means that there are 2 people at the American Airlines
rebooking desk and (literally) 235 people in front of us, all of which need
rebooking and hotel/meal vouchers, and many of which speak little English and
are a mixture of confused, incredulous, and angry. Rather like us, except by
this point we are too zombie-like to be angry and instead just stare into space
with glazed expressions, shuffling forward with the line in beleaguered
silence.
While we wait 90 minutes in the interminable hotel voucher
line, I call American Airlines customer service and spill said sob story about
kiddos to convince them to rebook us from Dulles to a direct Richmond flight.
30 minutes of supervisor bounce-around later, they agree. Except JFK doesn’t fly direct to Richmond. Ok… having lived in NYC 5 years, I know
American flies direct La Guardia to Richmond, can we do that? [Cue additional
supervisor discussion]. Ok, yes. And American will cover the hotel and the car
over to La Guardia. Great.
Vouchers in hand, we ride from JFK to the La Guardia Comfort
Inn (another bastion of purgatory-like ambiance, though with a shower and clean
bed, we could care less), when I realize I need to find 8 AA batteries because
the breastmilk pump I’d been toting along has died. And it’s midnight. In a
sketchy part of Queens. Of course La Guardia Comfort Inn does not have a store,
nor does the desk have batteries, but the desk guy informs me there’s a 24 hour
gas station a couple blocks down I could walk to. While walking alone at
midnight near La Guardia airport likely isn’t the smartest move, at this point
I’m fully convinced it is statistically impossible for anything else to go
wrong on this trip. I jog there and back, arrive safely, and pass “just” one
possible drug deal in process. Success.
The next morning, we get into the La Guardia terminal, only
to hear from the gate agent that there “may be possible mechanical failure” and
that the crew is “checking it out.” Happily (I guess?) they decide there is not
mechanical failure, we board 30 mins late, and finally land in Richmond.
Exhausted, elated, befuddled, we finally make it home, down coffee, and lay to
rest the Epic London Quest of 2016.
Like any true Quest, morals were realized along the way –
the help of good Samaritans, the assistance of spouses and grandparents, the
benefits of perseverance. And like any true Quest we emerged at the end with a
more nuanced perspective on life. But all the same, it was awfully nice to get
home.