Getting to Chicago

Janel and I had a tough time getting to Chicago this year, and almost decided to cancel our trip altogether. We were planning on flying out on Sunday, but a bad storm was in the forcast. This was similar to the prior week, during which time the roads were in terrible condition but PDX (our airport) was working without a hitch. So, Allen gave us a ride to the airport before the storm hit hard on Saturday, and we stayed in a hotel.

Sunday morning we got up to the sound of our phones getting text messages to discover that our flight was cancelled. We called United, and the first flight we could get out was on Christmas day. This would have only left us 4 days in Chicago, and we could not push our return date because of my surgery. Luckily we were able to bypass the massive line of people (only 4 customer service people had made it to the airport that day) and cut to the front because of my Premier status on United. This allowed us to get Standbye tickets for Monday.

Our next step was getting home. Allen had brought us to the airport, and we did not want to trouble anyone to pick us up because the weather was terrible. So, we rode the Max home, planning on getting a taxi from one of the stops to our house. When we were almost home, we had to bail on the max (temporarily) because Janel had to go to the bathroom really bad. As we were tromping through the foot of un-shoveled snow, a couple stopped and offered to give us a ride (which we thankfully accepted).

That pretty much brought us to the end of day 1. Before I tell the rest of the story, how about a couple of photos?

Here is one from our driveway showing a thick layer of ice between two layers of snow.

From Christmas 2008 Portland

Here is one of me holding two of the pieces of ice that were embedded in the snow.

From Christmas 2008 Portland

We decided to get up on Monday morning and try standbye (after checking the airport to make sure no flights had been cancelled yet). We hopped in the car (which already had chains on it) and drove through snowy Portland to the airport. Unlike in Chicago, Portland is not really equipped to deal with this sort of snow storm. So, you can't even see pavement on the major highways, while the local roads are NEVER plowed. My parents were discussing about how Western Springs decided to not salt the local roads this year. Portland never salts anything!

After about 1:15 ride to the airport (not bad actually), we parked the car and headed in. We discovered that despite the fact that the system had reported that the 6:15am flight to Chicago was "On Time" ... this turned out to be a bit of a lie since it was 9:00am and the flight still had not taken off. So, I talked to an agent and had them add us to standbye for that flight. We got really lucky. There was one open seat, and another seat where the person had not shown up yet. Since I was Premier, I got to bypass everyone else and move to the front of the standbye list. So, assuming that the random guy did not show up AND the flight actually did not get cancelled, we had a flight home.

After waiting until about noon, they finally boarded the airplane. The fun was not over yet. First they had to finish clearing the "big" runway so that we could take off. Then they had to de-ice the plane. Then I heard on the ground-control radio that one of the United de-icers was on fire. Then they announced that all their de-icers were broken but one, and it was sorta on the fritz. After about 3 hours of sitting there, we were finally able to take off.

So, we made it home! I never expected Portland weather to be the cause of flight delays at Christmas time. The last storm that was this big in December in Portland was over 40 years ago. So, hopefully this means we won't have to deal with anything like this after we have kids :).