Over Airline Highway and Through the Parking Garages, to Grandmother's House We Go

So, I missed my flight this morning. My brother called me an idiot, but I could’ve sworn that you only need to check in 20 minutes (I was there 25 minutes) before your flight. Oh, right, that’s when they start boarding. I’ll still make Thanksgiving, but everyone will probably be done eating by the time I get there, and someone has to leave to come pick me up. On the (slightly) brighter side, the girl I was sitting next to while waiting for my later flight said that she was sixth on a list of about ten people trying to fly standby on my earlier flight, so to my brother I say this: I may be an idiot, but somewhere someone got home earlier for Thanksgiving because I’m an idiot. I hope he (my brother) doesn’t eat all the turkey. I’m writing on a plane that’s more empty than any other plane I’ve ever been on, and it’s 2:20 pm central on Thanksgiving day, and when I arrive it’ll be about 5 eastern, I hope.

I only ran one red light on my way to the airport this morning, but I think I could’ve made it if I’d ran another one. Following my normal route to work, which is in between home and the airport, I was enjoying the lack of usual morning traffic and the fact that the guy in front of me was abusing the speed limit by almost 20 mph. We were stopped by a red light, for a street that no one uses except doctors and other hospital traffic for one of the bigger hospitals that didn’t get flooded by the storms. I’m wringing the steering wheel, one eye on the deific red light, the other on the dashboard clock, which is set five minutes fast on purpose. Anyway, point is, this light, this morning, served no purpose except to keep me from getting to airport. If there hadn’t been a car in front of me I would’ve driven through the light, but I was also hoping that the speedy fellow in front of me was going to get on the highway and I could follow him at high speeds through Metiarie to the airport. A few blocks after the light changed he slowed and blinked and turned right out of my life. As he turned, another car turned right from the street onto which he was turning and in front of me and proceded to obey the letter (or number as it were) of the law. I was not stopped by anymore redlights on my quest, although I did slow down for one.

The true idiocy of my thinking was that I thought I’d be able to park at the airport on Thanksgiving morning. All the lots were full, so I parked at Denny’s and jogged across airline highway, through the parking garages and to the ticket counters only to be told I was five minutes late, and would be arriving five hours late to my Grandmother’s house.

I probably would’ve gotten towed.

I drove home with my mind on my Grandmother, steelily determined to make my flight 3.5 hours later. I parked my car in front of my apartment, and walked to the only restaurant I’d seen open for a breakfast croissant and a heroically discarded sports page. I called a cab more than two hours before flight time, and he showed up within minutes. I arrived at the airport in time to buy Jay-Z’s new album and do all the work I had intended to do over the course of my 4 day weekend. The final step of said work was to add an MS Paint sketch to the spreadsheet I’d developed. Standby girl was impressed with my Paint skills.