Southeast Snowmageddon II

Air travel and severe weather never play nicely together. Somehow, it always seems that the weather often infringes on our travel plans.

This phenomenon goes back many years; starting, perhaps, with the mad scramble my secretary had to deal with to get me to Miami for a job when virtually all air travel in Wisconsin was shut down. This was before the days of the Internet, so she had to work with the travel agents and airlines to come up with an alternate plan that forced me to race to O'Hare in order to get to my project in Florida on time.

Our family dealt with weather issues again more recently when Joseph was coming home for Christmas Break during his sophomore year of college. He and his roommate Andrew had made it as far as Cincinnati when they were told that all flights to Milwaukee were shut down and they would be stuck in Cincinnati for at least three days. I began working one plan of attack that would have me driving to Cincinnati - only about six hours away - while Andrew's mother started working the phones with the airlines to look for another option. We figured that I could always stop somewhere along the way if she managed to work something out. Again; through an arduous process of working the phones, she got them onto a flight to Chicago. Diane and I headed to O'Hare to collect the boys and get them home.

There have been other incidents through the years that have sometimes dramatically increased my travel times as I waited out storms or manipulated my itinerary in order to reach my destination. It's rarely that big of a deal for me because I don't often have issues that are so emergent that a delay will cause great strife. That's not always true for everyone else in the family, though.

The severe weather beast raised its ugly head again on Tuesday when the approaching storm in the Southeast caused Delta to cancel all Thursday flights from Milwaukee to Atlanta. As luck would have it, of course, Matthew was scheduled on one of those cancelled flights on one leg of his flight to spend Valentine's Day weekend with Shelley in Greenville.

Fortunately, through the wonder of the Internet this time, Matthew was able to find a flight out of O'Hare Tuesday afternoon that would allow him to beat the storm to Greenville. This required him, of course, to get to O'Hare on relatively short notice.

Have no fear; Dad will take care of it, right?

I (fortunately) didn't have anything too pressing at work so I was able to head home to drive him to O'Hare. Diane offered to drive him, but Diane driving to O'Hare and back would have been a pretty stressful event in her day. Not that I like driving around Chicago, mind you, but it's much less stressful for me than it would be for Diane.

We dropped Matthew off at O'Hare's Terminal 1 in plenty of time for him to make his flight. He did not tell Shelley that he was coming early, so he was able to surprise her by arriving Tuesday instead of Thursday. The bonus time down in Greenville was made even more exciting when the university announced they were cancelling all Wednesday classes and activities because of the impending storm.

Even Southeast Snowmageddon II couldn't put a damper on Matthew's plans to spend Valentine's Day weekend with Shelley - and what a story this will be for the ages!