A Little (not) Fun on My Flight Home

I was returning home from a half way around the world trip last week. The trip was not bad. Things needed to be done got done. My spirit was high from finishing the nice trip. I  was looking forward to return home for a nice weekend rest. The returning part of the trip did not go so well when the agent at Bengaluru airport in Bangalore informed me of my last fright out of JFK airport to my city was cancelled (it was a multiple-leg flight).  I somewhat knew there were a snow storm on the way from the south to NYC.  I pressed on. I wanted to get at least to JFK airport.

The nice agent finally said,

“Oh, it looks like your flight is not cancelled.”

“But I could not give you the boarding pass for the flight out of JFK.”

“You will have to get it when you get there”.

Did I hear it right ? I thought to myself,

“Yeah, it is ok to get the boarding pass there.  It is not uncommon”.

I immediately checked in. I had a high hope!

My last international flight before getting to JFK airport from Bengaluru airport was from Heathrow airport. The news about the weather in US at Heathrow was about the same that snow was continuing on to NY.

Finally, my flight left Heathrow and I caught a sight of Heathrow airport below. Good bye Heathrow. I still had hope that my flight out of JFK airport was still good.

The flight from Heathrow was smooth. I forgot any thing about the snow storm and my potential cancelling flight out of JFK airport.  As I walked out of the plan, my name was called at the gate.  I thought that was a good news thinking the airline knew me and tried to get me on the soonest flight.  I was wrong. The agent at the gate told me my next flight would be on Sunday. It was Friday night and that would be about two nights in NY city somewhere.

So much for the high hope of returning home that weekend. I was sure that the snow storm could not be that bad. But I was again wrong about that. It was quite severe that I could only stay in the hotel room and my flight out on Sunday was cancelled too. The next available one would be on Monday night or Tuesday. Aggg…

Well, it was not all that bad. I had good rest and probably better than if I were home. I was quite enjoy watching the entire series of “Resident Evil” , a few from series Star Trek the Next Generation and some other movies. I was busy finding the soonest flight out of JFK. I was even considering plan to rent a car and drive home myself (Yeah, not a good idea) or take an Amtrak train out of Penn station in NY city. It seemed like making a plot to get out of prison.  I also learned that snow storm has name too. Jonas is the name of the storm. A cool name 🙂

Once in a while, I took a break to take a peak out of the window to see what it looked like outside.  I hoped snow stopped and hoped the road was clear.  I really appreciated those who kept the road clean. It was cold, very cold. Jonas dumped 30.5 inches at the JFK airport. It broke the record of 26 inches during Feb 16-18, 2003. That was a lot of snow!

Now at home listing to “Ain’t Got Far To Go” by Jess Glynne which I came to know on the airplane during this trip gets me thinking differently about the meaning of the song.