Getting to NYC: What I didn’t know about Chicago

Now that I've had a week to tell the story to a couple dozen people, the consensus seems to be that "best birthday present ever" doesn't do justice to the magnitude of Christina's gift. Anyone out there with suggestions for a better category to describe the experience, let me know. For context, at this point I think of the trip as slightly less life changing than the birth of a first child.

Back to the Trip:

Now that I knew where I was going and that everything had been taken care of, I turned into a bit of a blubbering idiot. I'm sure the guy at the check-in counter was concerned about my mental health. Once through security, I spent most of the time at the Seattle airport watching a TV tuned to CNN as election results came in (who said the mid-terms don't matter). When we boarded our 757, Christina settled in to sleep. I, however, was too excited to close my eyes so I watched the in-flight movie. We got into Chicago at 4:30 the next morning and were running 30 minutes ahead of schedule. Sadly, this good luck was not to last.

We transferred planes and were just about to take off when the engines died during the usual pre-flight equipment check. The pilot told us he was going to run the test again but got the same troubling result a second time. I didn't know this at the time, but it turns out that O'Hare International is a black hole of delays and equipment failures (avoid at all costs). Not knowing this at the time, and never having experienced a delay on account of a plane that might kill me, Christina and I went looking for options. After five conversations with four different airline staff and getting no less than six different stories, we tried to check in to another flight that would get us there an hour late. Shortly after we were unsuccessful in boarding our replacement flight, we realised that there was no way to get our luggage from our grounded plane and so all we could do was wait.

Don't worry, coffee in hand, we hunkered down to wait for news. On our third lap round the customer service merry-go-round, we were told that all our problems were solved. A replacement plane had been found and thankfully it was capable of flight. Once we taxied away from the gate, the 23 consecutive hours of being awake caught up with me and I was asleep before the wheels left the ground.

This is only the beginning...