New York, New York

It’s freezing in the Big Apple! I wouldn’t be surprised it’s it’s about -20 Celsius!!

What a trip!! We arrived at Fort Myers Aiport on Saturday at about 10am to catch our 3 hour flight into New York, only to find that New York is stuck in the biggest blizzard since 1978! All flights into and out of the area was cancelled.

Delta was as helpful as ever! We called their hepline and asked to be rerouted to the nearest airport overnight, but unfortunately, they could only route us to an airport within 100 miles of our final destination. So I said fine, and they said “I’m sorry Sir, all airports within 100 miles of JFK are closed”.

FANTASTIC! At this point, I was like an WWF Superstar with PMS. Anyways, we managed to speak to a real human being at the information counter, after explaining to her what we were trying to do, she started to look for flights. We eventually suggested a flight connecting from Fort Myers, overnight in Atlanta and a rebooking the next day to New York. Lo and behold, we arrived in Atlanta (90 minute flight), about 8 hours after we got to Fort Myers Airport.

By the way, so far on this trip, I’ve finished reading Dan Brown’s International Best Seller, The Da Vinci Code, soon to be a full length feature, starring Tom Hanks & Audrey Tatou, directed by Ron Howard.

Anyways, so now (Saturday night), we arrived in Atlanta, and checked into the Hilton – Atlanta was cold, but no snow. Nothing could have prepared me for the next day’s flight.

We had breakfast at 9am and we got to Hartsfield at 11am, and after much fuffing around with security, tickets, checkin etc, we managed to get to the gate on time. The plane was then delayed by about an hour.

Eventually we board and takeoff for New York, this was to be the longest flight of my life. It’s normally a 2 hour trip, and the ride was pretty shaky, but nothing serious. Eventually we get to within a few miles of JFK International, and the ride start getting rough and everyone gets agitated, but it’s normally “OK” because we’re descending and will be landing soon – or so we thought.

The pilot says that there’s a 15 minute delay and he has to circle for a while. A long 15 minutes passed.

The pilot then speaks through the Intercom and tells us that our runway has been closed and he has to do another approach, so he circles again, over the Atlantic ocean. The ride was very bumpy, so bumpy in fact, that I had my food sink into my socks! The women next to me started hyperventilating and her daughter starting puking. All the while, Llewellyn is reading some article about South Park – obviously, not too concerned.

Anways, another hour of this and eventually we land and everyone roars and claps hands. The moment was very tense and EVERYONE (even Claasen at this point), was relieved to have touched down.

You think that’s bad? Wait till you hear the rest of it…

So now we’re at JFK, and we’re taxiing down the runway for about 15 minutes (long taxi).
Eventually we disembark and look at the screens and go to baggage area E. No baggage, so we trek in the snow (outside the airport, because we weren’t allowed back in through security), to baggage Area D. At this stage people were nearly swearing – our baggage wasn’t there either – something about the runway change messing with the baggage controllers, blah blah.

So now, after another trek, we get to baggage claim B, where we wait for an hour to collect our baggage. Now, this is the fun part. We go outside, in the snow, cold and hail, to get a cab, where we stood in a queue for over an hour. Amongst other things, the idiotic taxi controller broke his radio and stood around like kippie, without telling anyone. I will post a movie clip later from the queues.

Anyways, eventually we get to the hotel after like 12 hours of commuting and only 1 meal (Delta did not serve a meal on the flight, typical).

That’s my fantastic weekend – how was yours ?

This is also my longest blog ever

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