Our trip began at 3:24am, when I received a voicemail at work that said Saturday’s 6:30am flight from Newark to Charlotte had been cancelled. When I checked the message 6 hours later, I was confused, especially since I wasn’t scheduled to fly from Newark to Charlotte at all. Max (team leader) made a few phone calls and confirmed that our flight was still listed as departing on time.
With weather heading our way, we had reason to be concerned. Friends and coworkers were debating between hitting the grocery stores and just riding it out on the provisions they already had. Then the prediction changed. The 0-3 inches on Wednesday turned into 3-5 inches. On Thursday it became 5-8 inches, and by Friday, they were predicting 8-11 inches of snow, ice, and freezing rain!
Max made the call just after lunch: “Can you leave by 7:00pm tonight? We need to beat the weather out of town.” We couldn’t realistically drive to Guatemala, so I knew he had a plan in mind. With the mounting predictions of snow, our flight from Greensboro to Atlanta had been cancelled. We were going to rent vans and drive to Atlanta to catch the second leg of our flight into Guatemala City.
I won’t dwell on the situation, but I will say that having the middle seat on a 3-person bench near the back of a 15-passenger van is much worse than the middle seat on a flight. No head rest, can’t lean to the left or right, can’t lean forward without hitting the person in front of you. Ugh, it was a long drive.
A couple of hours of sub-40mph playing chicken with tractor trailers and then we were out of the worse of it. We stopped in Clemson for a rest and some all-American sustenance—McDonalds. A few more hours and we were in Atlanta, eating at a packed and boisterous IHOP at 3am. I’ll have the Two x Two x Two please!
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