Going to the Airport in Time of Virus

Marcello was very eager to (finally) get on the airplane that would (eventually) take him across the Atlantic to that wondrous land beyond Beyond, where his (real) Home and (real) Family waited anxiously to greet him (and then promptly put him in quarantine).

It was hard to contain his excitement Thursday morning when he woke up (early) with his bags already packed, his body moving back and forth, his feet nervously tapping, eager to get moving. We left the house for the five-minute drive to the airport, parked the car, walked from the parking deck to the United check-in counter, and then were told: "Your flight has been canceled."

Joy.

One advantage of being only three hours from Chicago is that it is entirely possible to drive from Grand Rapids to O'Hare airport in the time it would take to fly. (Weird, I know.) So instead of moaning and crying and trying to figure out another flight to Newark, we jumped back in the car and drove home and grabbed a few snack items and jumped back in the car and drove down to Chicago (along I-294 up to the airport) in record time (due to the lack of traffic and negligible construction impact) and made it to the airport in plenty of time.

Which was a good thing, since we ran into a problem: One of the luggage items was overweight by a pound or two (and they wanted to charge him $100 for it!!) so we unpacked it and shifted some items to his backpack; but then while trying to close up the luggage again, the zipper broke and we had to get assistance from the (extremely bored / eager to do something / very helpful) United staff to tape up the broken luggage (which was threatening to spill the contents of the luggage all over the place) and place it inside a plastic bag (tied at the top) so that he could then check in his bags and get through Security and get to his gate and make the flight to Newark (and then Frankfurt and then Home).

Once he had disappeared on the other side of Security, Cheryl and I were able to relax and head back to the car to begin our long, leisurely, drive back home, listening to an audio book and eating the snacks we had packed (which we had not eaten on the way because we were just too anxious). It was a nice drive. There was very little traffic (mostly tractor-trailer rigs) until we got to Michigan City, IN, and then there was effectively none.

Overall, a nice, seven-hour round-trip Adventure with me and my girl, doing what we can to make up for the failure of local airlines to get their customers where they need to go.

We heard from Marcello as he got to his intermediate stops via text. He had no further issues getting home.

We slept well that night!