Travel Notes In an Airport That is Easily Frightened by Snow

I thought my travel complain du jour was that I didn't get a happy ending in either Berlin or Newark, but it turns out that Newark's airport shuts down its flights to Canada pretty quickly when it snows.  In Canada, this kind of snow would not shake things up.

Anyway, it seems like it was a "random" day at security for Steve, as I got "random" attention twice.  The second time it was hardly necessary since I went through security to get to my flight and then turned around both because my flight was cancelled and because I dropped one of my ID cards in the Customs area.

Good times.  The good news about the cancellation is that I can't teach tomorrow I had plenty of time to go back and get my dropped id.  The other big of good news is that NYC is a Saideman-rich environment, so I am blogging while I wait for my brother to pick me up.  

I forgot to mention in my previous posts that something happened on the way to Berlin that I had never seen before.  The bathroom door fell off its hinge so we got to watch the flight attendants repair it mid-flight.  They turned out to be handy folks.

I am enjoying my year of United Gold as it gets me into European airport lounges, and the pretzels in Berlin were tasty and soft.  Almost as good as Philly soft pretzels.

On the way back,  I watched Big Hero 6, which was good but not as worthy as the Lego movie.  I did enjoy both the Eye of the Tiger montage moment and T.J. Miller yelling "Science, yeah!"  I am pretty sure that the movie won the Oscar because they put the animator credits before the voice cast credits.

Spoilers below



I also watched If I Stay,  in which Chloe Morentz plays a teenager who flashes back while in a coma, figuring out whether she should fight and live or just accept her death.  It helped continue a running theme of the day.  Big Hero 6 was a dead parents/dead brother movie and ..... so was If I Stay.  We thought the brother lived, but they killed him off too.  Between a memorial panel at the ISA and Parks and Rec, I have been ... sensitive lately, so even in this manipulative movie, I was semi-teary with all of the family members dropping dead.

Once in Newark, I moved from sad to angry at myself for losing the card, but it was recovered, I was contacted and all is good now.  Well, we shall see.  My flight tomorrow is in the mid-afternoon as everything is already booked up.  And to get to Ottawa from Newark, I have to go to Laguardia to flight to Dulles airport in DC to get the flight to Ottawa.  Not good for me, but Vegas has multiple bets up:
3-1 that I make it all the way home, 5-1 that I don't make it out of Laguardia, and 7-2 that I make it to Dulles but not beyond.  There is also a prop bet--how long my sister-in-law laughs when I ask to get picked up at Dulles tomorrow, if that flight is cancelled.

Let's just say that I am not optimistic.  The last time I had to layover for a night due to weather-related cancellations, if I remember correctly, is after I gave one of the best job talks of my life at a place I desperately wanted to work... and I didn't get the job.  So, the stakes today are mucho lower.

Oh, I am thankfully to my FlightTrack app for not only notifying me faster than the screens at the airport that my flight was cancelled but also having the handy button that gave me the United number I needed to call to get re-booked.