Poor Dick! He was scheduled to meet me in Paris on Friday morning. But between mechanical failures, bad weather and careless airline processes, he didn’t arrive until Saturday afternoon, a full 33 hours late.
As I listened to him fume about his daily travel delays at a dollar a minute, I didn’t dare tell him of the fabulous time I was having while he was waiting in the terminal for hours on end, eating bad airport food and struggling to rebook his flight. I kept my guilty pleasures to myself.
When he called me to tell me his overseas flight was cancelled, he didn’t need to know I having a culinary high at Neva Cuisine. Or that while he was checking in at the airport hotel Michelle and I were riding Velib bikes around the city. Nor that I was in Nirvana at the Buddha Bar when he called to say he’d missed his connection and they couldn’t book him a flight until the next day.
But he kept pushing until he found someone competent enough to get him a flight that night, albeit with a stop at Heathrow, his third stop in a one stop flight. When he finally arrived at Charles de Gaulle he was tired, angry and wondering how unlucky he could be. The count: one cancelled flight due to mechanical problems, one wind storm in Chicago, one missing maintenance log and two instances of the gateway not being ready when the plane arrived. But all that mattered to me is that I could finally hug my sweetie.
What’s the longest you’ve ever been delayed on a flight?
Christine Holmes
November 20, 2011 at 8:12 pm
I really enjoy your blog. Thank you!
CD
November 21, 2011 at 1:49 pm
Oh how I miss French pate’
ladyfleur
November 22, 2011 at 2:51 pm
Me too. We’re in London now, so it’s all fish and chips and sausage and mash. Not bad, but not fine food.