On our way

On Monday, the alarm clock rang at 4 am. With great effort, I woke up Boy in Black, who had lost the coin flip with his sister and had to drive his parents to the airport for our early morning flight. I think he'd only been asleep for an hour, but he pulled his sneakers on sleepily and trudged out to the car. We arrived at the airport while it was still dark, checked in, made our way to the gate, and congratulated ourselves for making it on time. Then a woman with a navy blue uniform and obnoxiously cheerful voice announced that the flight might be delayed. The plane was here – we could see it out the window – but apparently there were "mechanical problems."

to For two hours, we sat at the gate, eating the food I had in my backpack and comparing notes with other passengers about what connections we were all going to miss. The dark sky outside the window grow lighter. The plane was still sitting there, and I couldn't see any activity whatsoever. Where were all the mechanics racing to fix it?

Finally, Official Woman in Navy Blue, who had spent the last two hours lying to people about how they were going to make their connections in Big Midwestern City because somehow the hour time difference would make up for any kind of delay, got tired of the whole scene and disappeared down the ramp into the airplane. When she came back, she announced cheerfully that she had talked to the pilot and had good news. "He is going to fire up the engines and see if they work."

Other passengers took this news calmly, but I stared at her in horror. We were about to get on a plane that would be hurtling thousands of feet above the earth. I was hoping for some kind of assurance that the mechanical problems might actually be fixed and that the plane was in good working order before we did something as foolish as fly up into the sky.

My husband seemed calmer about the whole thing than I was and convinced me to get on the plane, which did take us safely to Big Midwestern City, where of course we missed our connection. Official Woman in Navy Blue had managed to get us on another flight though, and soon enough, we had landed in Maple Leaf Country and were in a rental car, driving towards the mountains.