Stormy Weather

So I’m back on the road again. I’ve long since stopped chronicling every single damn trip I take here at blahblahginger. It would bore me to write about each time I’m sentenced to Arkansas, upstate New York, or the Middle Of Nowhere, Ohio. And if it bores me, it will certainly bore the crap out of you.

This month, though, it’s Chicago. With all due respect to Drew Carey, Chicago rocks. I'm staying right downtown, in the middle of The Magnificent Mile. Restaurants and shopping and lights, oh my! However, winter doesn’t rock. Last week, that monster ice storm that crippled the state of Oklahoma grazed northern Illinois on its way toward the east coast, where it dumped around a foot of snow on the Boston area. Chicago lucked out. They were predicting a nasty, treacherous ice storm. While some of the far suburbs had a rough time, the city itself escaped with not much more than lots of very cold rain. Later in the week, though, I started hearing from P during our phone calls that there was a doozy of a winter nor’easter ready to blow into Boston over the weekend, precisely when I was planning to turn around and head back to Chicago for week two of my client project.

Only getting to spend around 36 hours at home with the wife and doggies before re-packing and leaving again is bad enough. Dealing with another nasty winter travel adventure makes it worse. P had a horrible time getting home from work on Sunday morning, and had to wait for a plow to come and touch our street for the first time. Her Mazda would have had no shot at negotiating nearly a foot of freshly fallen snow otherwise. Saturday night, hours before the first snowflake fell, American Airlines called to cancel my Sunday noon flight to Chicago. They rebooked me on the 4:30 pm flight, but I thought that was just a formality. I would have bet folding money that I wasn’t getting out until Monday morning at the earliest. Well, it’s good I didn’t make the bet. After the 10 inches of snow, and a light crust of sleet, it turned to just rain, and my flight to Chicago was one of very few all day to escape Logan nearly on time. The last little bit of good luck? When American switched me to the later flight, they also gave me a free upgrade to first class! So I made it back here to the land of Da Bulls and Da Bears without a hitch. And my hotel room is exactly across the hall from the one I had last week!

What are the odds of getting home safely at the end of the week without more snow? Let's not bet on it.