Trip complete washout, but at least I tried
Saturday morning was like a lot of Sunday mornings in college.
The alarm would wake my roommate after a night of him being overserved. He would climb out of bed, get dressed and go to the bathroom to freshen up for church.
Then he would come back, undress, plop into bed, and say just before his head hit the pillow, "God, you know I tried."
The operative word here is tried. I really tried to make Saturday's 10:59 a.m. flight to Charlotte for today's Bears game.
Maybe you heard it was raining pretty hard about that time. How hard was it raining? It was raining so hard that trucks were suffering shrinkage.
United Airlines' Web site assured me Flight 780 was on time. I left at 9 a.m. for the 15-minute trip to O'Hare.
Algonquin Road was flooded, so I doubled back to Busse, took it to Oakton, took that to the tollway, took that past the tollbooth, and arrived at the airport entry road.
SO NEAR, YET SO FREAKIN' FAR!!!
It was about 9:30 a.m. Traffic moved at about a foot a minute. The ol' CR-V was getting inches per gallon.
The mind wanders when you're sitting on a bridge to nowhere. You wonder what "CH9" on a light pole means. You wonder what "Judi J" is doing in the Lexus up ahead. You wonder whether there's a limousine liberal in the limo next to her.
The guy on WSCR-AM said, "Well, rain has really put the Cubs and Sox in a bind."
HEY, WHAT ABOUT MY BIND, BUSTER!!!
The sign to the side said all lots were open, raising a philosophical question: If you can't get to an empty parking lot in the forest, is there really a parking spot there?
Anyway, an "Osgood File" on WBBM-AM focused on the Amish and how they still travel by horse and buggy.
Sounded like a good idea right about then. Anything would be better than sitting there counting raindrops on a windshield.
My daydream ended in a startle. Anarchy was arising in the form of a black car advancing on the shoulder -
IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION OF TRAFFIC!!!
A man left a maroon Chevy with Michigan license plates, walked across a couple of lanes, and went to relieve himself in a tree. Several others decided that was the thing to do and sought their own relief on the side of the road.
At 10:38 a.m. a 'BBM reporter said, "There's no way to get into O'Hare Airport at this time."
No kidding. Some passengers got out of cars and started walking to the terminal. Others walked from the terminal. More cars rode the shoulder to and from. The mess became messier.
PLEASE, SOMEONE GET ME OUT OF HERE!!!
Finally, finally, stuck cars were removed from the pond under a viaduct. The flood was pumped away. Traffic unsnarled.
I arrived at the United counter at 11:20 a.m. My flight was delayed but eventually left without me anyway. All other seats to Charlotte all day were reserved. All lines to seek a solution were longer than a mobster's funeral procession.
I went back home, where I'll monitor today's Bears game.
"PAPA BEAR, YOU KNOW I TRIED!!!"
mimrem@dailyherald.com