And this is just the beginning!?

15Jun09

Wow. Just WOW. The last couple days have been crazy.

Unsurprisingly, I put off packing until Sunday night (I left Monday morning). It was for good reason, though. Johnny and I threw a party! It was my ‘going away’ party and his birthday party. It took surprisingly little work to set things up, but the party itself turned out spectacularly. We fashioned a beer pong table out of random pieces of our old bar and plywood, and my dad took it upon himself to smoke some pork. I told him that it was completely unnecessary, and that any food at a party would be considered a luxury, but he still went through all the trouble of cooking that meat, as well as baked beans and cole slaw (which I actually enjoyed, for once!). By 930 or so, there were a few dozen people there, including some people I hadn’t seen in awhile. After it got dark, we turned on the floodlight and the pool light and everyone just had a good time. There was just barely enough beer (n stuff) for me, and other people brought some various drinks. Things got pretty blurry towards the end of the night, but nothing crazy happened and everyone was well behaved. I had an amazing time, and couldn’t have asked for a better ‘last night’ in Topeka.

We also shot the inaugural episode of "We Should Be Recording This", but that’s a whole other story. The most important part is that I got my new Camera! It’s a Canon HF200, which records to SDHC cards (basically SD cards), and shoots 1080p! I’m planning on getting some great shots of the Mediterranean, so everyone can look forward to that.

Packing on Sunday was an adventure, but I made it to the airport with only two mental breakdowns, which I consider decently impressive. I woke up with a massive headache at noon on Sunday after the party Saturday night. I helped my mom move some stuff to a storage facility, and then we went to get some last minute clothing items at the mall (which doesn’t suck as much since the renovation) and TJ Maxx (where true playas shop). Needless to say, I procured plenty of awesome Summertime clothes and an awesome rolling duffel to take on the boat. The miracle of the day was me finding a hat that fits my oddly shaped noggin, which I was pretty excited about.

Shopping essentially turned into me procrastinating about packing, which was dangerous. We finally got back home at around 5, and Katrina and I spent some quality time together as I packed. We started listening to music and were pretty inefficient at first (distracted by bomb corn salsa), but things got rolling eventually. After a couple hours of sorting my clothes (I told you we were inefficient), I started throwing things in my brand new (but awesomely cheap) suitcase. I actually fit all my clothes in it, including some things I didn’t think I’d have room for! I weighed it on a scale afterwards, though, and it came in over 50lbs. I took a few things out, but I’m still very happy about how much I fit in it.

As I began to pack all my ‘utility items’ in the other duffel, I was feeling pretty good. Surely I could fit the simple things like deoderant, notebooks, etc. in the giant bag I had left, right? Not so much. I actually kind of forgot that I was going to have to pack school supplies, but the real reason this became so challenging was because my second bag is only about 60% the size of the first bag. I quickly became stressed out as I thought of more and more things I needed to bring, and the amount of available space became less and less. The second bag was about 3/4ths of the way full when I had packed everything I had around the house. I still had to go to WalMart to grab some shampoo, notebooks, pens, etc, though.

So I set off to WalMart at about 2am, knowing that we would have to leave for the airport at 4. 2 hours seemed like plenty of time, but I made the critical mistake of forgetting that WalMart is FUCKING WALMART, and WalMart has no fucking organizational scheme whatsoever. An hour (and a cartfull of stuff) later, I was ready to check out. I was feeling a little stressed, but still in a great mood as I cheerfully strolled up to one of the two open registers. I greeted the elderly female cashier with a "How are you doing this evening, ma’am?", to which she replied, "Bad." Clearly, she was a cheerful lady. I tried to make her smile a bit and cheer her up, but she seemed determined to be grumpy. That was her decision, though. I wasn’t about to let it affect me… until it did. She wouldn’t let me use my parents card to charge the items (even though I offered to let her call them and I showed her my ID), so I had to call my dad, wake him up, and have him come pay for it. For some reason this just sent all my nerves and stresses over the edge. I just sat down on the stupid WalMart benches that they have around, waiting for my dad, being angry at the world and cursing this cranky old lady cashier under my breath.

Things got payed for, though, and on the way back from WalMart I started to realize how little time I had left before leaving. It was 3:30. I had 30 minutes to sift through 5 bags of WalMart items and pack them in my already too full bag. For some reason, I found this crazy hard. I packed pretty much everything for a reason, and it sucks to have to sit things aside that you know you’ll want on the trip. I managed to frantically pack everything, and was barely able to zip my suitcase (with some help). Yay! Suitcases packed. I needed to take a shower, though, so I took one as quickly as possible. I was ready to go by 4. Mission accomplished.

And then it started raining. Not just raining– straight up MONSOONING all over Northeast Kansas. Awesome…

Katrina was going to drive me to the airport, but she couldn’t find her glasses… or her driver’s license. And she probably would have flipped trying to navigate back to Topeka from MCI in the hurricane outside, so my dad drove me. Things were more or less fine on the way to the airport, with the ‘less’ entailing a second for-now-unspecified freak out on my part. We drove through heavy rain pretty much all the way to KC, and almost died at least three times, but arrived alive at MCI. I ran in with my dad to check my bags, only to find that they were both overweight. Apparently bathroom scales aren’t the best luggage-weighers around. Alltogether, my bags were 14lbs overweight. Awesome… I somehow managed to bring down that weight by taking out only a container of Kool-Aid, some smelly wet black loafers, and Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat. Can you even imagine what I did keep? In the end, the combined weight of my bags was exactly 100lbs. Ace.

30 seconds after hugging my dad goodbye and watching him leave, my mom appeared out of nowhere (she had a flight too) to see me off. After checking her bags (which was itself an adventure), we walked to my gate. Things were going to be okay. My bags were packed (barely). I had everything I needed. I was about to go on the trip of a lifetime. I was in the zone. I made it through security without a hitch, other than an awkward inspection of my toiletry bag (you can ask me why). As I finally sat down for the first time in 16 hours, I couldn’t wait to being the adventure. Just 20 minutes until I’m on the plane…

Fast forward an hour and a half, and I’m still sitting at the gate in MCI listening to my headphones. A mechanical failure had delayed the flight. No big deal, though. This had happened to me before. I played it cool, and we got going about 90 minutes late. What followed next was the best nap of my entire life. I fell asleep before takeoff and woke up as people were getting off the plane. Woot. I love flying, but it is kind of boring just sitting in a cramped seat. Again, though, my content was quickly spoiled when I realized what time it was- 10:25. My flight from O’Hare to Montreal was supposed to depart at 10:30! I maintained hope by considering the likelihood that this second flight was delayed just like the first, but I was unfortunately wrong. I sprinted the marathon across O’Hare and arrived at gate C4 (probably the farthest one away) at about 10:35, where I looked outside and saw the plane still docked against the people-chute. I ran up to the United Airlines rep and begain to explain my situation when she quickly and matter-of-factly injected "Sorry, sir. The flight is closed. Go to customer service". Needless to say, I was pretty upset. I’ve never actually missed a flight, though I’ve had lots of close calls. A little frustrated, and way tired since my backpack weighs about 30lbs, and began to trek back across the airport to United Airlines customer service. Ten minutes later, I looked up to see an immeasurably long line at customer service. Great.

The line really wasn’t too horrible, because the other disgruntled passengers were very personable. I kinda-sorta had a conversation with a Chinese guy who had missed his flight to Shanghai. I let him use my phone to call his wife (presumably) and update her with his situation. I honestly couldn’t understand a word he was saying, but he was trying to be nice, so I just smiled and nodded. After an hour and a half, and orange vitamin water, and some roasted garlic chips, I made it to the front of the line. There a very nice man named "Ray Ray" (srsly) hooked me up with a nonstop flight to Halifax, leaving at 6pm CST and arriving at 11pm Halifax time. I was thrilled, and it looked like things were finally going to be okay again… until I remembered something.

Hostels are usually run by only a few people (it seems), so most of them don’t allow guests to check in after 11pm. A call to the downtown Halifax HI-Hostel confirmed by worries– I can’t stay there tonight. This minor disappointment turned to frantic horror as I envisioned myself sleeping on the streets of Halifax garding 130lbs of luggage until tomorrow morning. On top of this, my phone and laptop were almost out of batteries, the wifi in the airport wouldn’t work, and the 3G on my iPhone was unbearably slow. I began to freak, but then decided to just breathe and take things slow. I first found an outlet for my laptop (and, thus, phone). I started looking for other hostels and hotels on my phone, but literally ALL OF THEM were full. Katrina wouldn’t answer the phone at home, and my mom wasn’t near her laptop, so I called Meg to ask her to help find me a place to stay, which she very generously agreed to.

Still homeless, but more under control, I came up with the idea of crowdsourcing my dilemma. I used the brilliant copy and paste of the new iPhone OS 3.0 to send a Facebook chat message to all the SASers I knew that were online. I asked them to keep an eye out for an open bed, couch, or floor that I could sleep on this evening. Within minutes, I had unknown numbers calling my phone. Yay. Nicole Gordan (http://nicolegordan.blogspot.com/) reached me first, and is going to let me stay with her and her friends at the Hampton Inn in Dartmouth, which is AMAZING. I can’t believe that everyone was so generous and willing to help. It seriously helped me avoid so much stress and anguish. I’m so thrilled that I’m calling this SAS Lesson #1: People are so AMAZING!!

So now I’m sitting at gate C6 at O’Hare, charging my laptop/phone from an outlet nearby, watching CNN, and people watching. My flight boards in an hour, and I’ve got wifi to last me until then. This is the good life, but it sure took some craziness to get this far. I can’t even imagine what the world’s got in store for me in the days to come.

pho1to

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