Winter Break Update: the 6 hour taxi to the runway

Hello reader(s)- Sorry it's been so long since I wrote. Internet is mad expensive abroad.

My break started off the moment I finished my Revolutionary France exam and dropped off Christmas cards for my advisors. I stuffed a few bags of stuff and headed home. I was only home for about 2 hours before my mother was flipping out to me about an approaching snow storm. 36 hours after I arrived home, we were headed to an airport. We weren't scheduled to leave for another day and a half but all flights out of Dulles were canceled out of precaution of the approaching storm.

Seeing the red 'CANCELED' sign next to our flight number online, my dad and I started looking for alternative routes. Finding a flight leaving at 9:55pm we called the international desk, got ourselves on the flight, then zipped up our bags, called a cab, and were on our way. After a pit stop at the post office to drop off some applications and bills and other important mail (perhaps a rash decision?), we got to the airport running in to be greeted by an empty airport with a single LONG line in front of Delta. I walked up to an airport employee telling him our flight was leaving in a little under 2 hrs and we needed to check in. He informed me that our flight had actually been delayed until 1am. Okay, phew. So we stood in line.

After an hour we reached the front of the line. We then proceeded to stand at the counter for the next 2 hrs as the woman behind the counter with her neck scarf tied on too tight and the man whose eyes shown through his rectangular glasses continually looked confused and dumbfounded told us that we in fact weren't booked on the 9:55pm flight....

Wait, what? How can it be? We showed them our confirmation number. I got online and showed them that the flight comes up as still available. Nothing. So with no other hopes left, we settled for flying standby. Meanwhile, the snow had begun to fall. Soft and slow at first but by the time this story ends, you'll see it was several inches of snow on the ground before we took off.

We got to our gate. At this point we were exhausted from the stressful trip to the airport and the unfruitful battle of words at the ticket counter. At this particular moment I felt like the adult in the family: as my dad complained that all the restaurants in the airport were closed and my mom kept saying 'ugh i jut want to go home.'

At 1:00am, the flight was delayed another 45 mins and at half past the hour, we were granted tickets. One small victory.

At 2:00am we boarded the flight and at 3:17am I sent a text to my sister saying we were taking off. I then dozed off for 3 mins, waking up at 3:20am to the pilot telling us we'd be delayed a bit more for the taxiing area to be shoveled and the plane to be de-iced. By this point there was perhaps 6 inches on the ground?

The snow continued and somewhere around 4 or 5am we were set to leave and taxied towards the runway, when again the pilot came on the PA system saying 'Folks, it appears that our left engine isn't de-icing properly so we're actually going to return to the gate and get this sorted out.'

People started to lose it. One woman seated near my father, started to nearly throw a fit, asking to get off the plane and saying she was just going home. She wasn't going to be able to make her connection anymore and wherever she was going was rather remote and there were only flights there 1 time per week. I can just imagine others on the plane with children who hadn't slept and/or eaten in hours. We sat there for a looooong time and the crew didn't offer us water or put on movies. Nada. So I tried to sleep again, intermittently chatting with the woman next to me.

At 7:30am we de-iced for the final time and took off.

Needless to say, I don't particularly enjoy flying. Even the next morning making our connection was eventful...but enough about airports. More winter break stories to come in other posts.