Unexpected Adventure

More than once, I’ve said that the difference between a vacation and an adventure is that with a vacation, you know how it’s going to turn out. Of course, that also means planned trips can sometimes turn into adventures, if so much goes wrong that you’re no longer sure of how things are going to turn out.

When compared with flying into the Congo or getting stranded on a glacier, flying by airline from San Francisco, California to Providence, Rhode Island might not seem a likely set-up for new horizons or excitement. But last week, I was reminded once again that even standard, everyday life holds the potential for unexpected adventure.

My flight to Providence, on United Airlines, connected through Chicago. We were delayed taking off from SFO, but I had a 90-minute layover in Chicago, so all seemed fine. In fact, when the gate agent in Chicago came on board and informed us that they’d just had a massive thunderstorm come through, with 70-mile-an-hour winds, so lots of flights had been diverted to other airports (so we should check and make sure our connections hadn’t been cancelled), I thought the delay had been fortuitous. It had allowed us to miss the storm and land without being diverted elsewhere.

Walking through the Terminal C, I saw an ungodly line at customer service, hundreds of people long, that stretched halfway down the concourse—a result of all the diverted/cancelled flights. My connection, however, was scheduled on time, and all seemed right with the world … until it wasn’t. First, the Providence flight, coming in from D.C., was delayed because of the weather. Well, that was understandable. It landed, unloaded, and we were all about to board when they discovered a mechanical problem with the plane. Fifteen minutes later, the agent announced the flight was being cancelled.

From one of the spared to one of the condemned, just that fast. Some people dashed off for the lines immediately. But those of us who lingered a couple of minutes, contemplating our next move, got an invaluable tip from another gate agent who walked over about that point.

“If I were you,” she said, “I’d stay away from those customer service lines. Just go to the departures board and see if there’s any flight going close to where you want to go, then go straight to the gate and try to get on the standby list for that flight. That’s your best chance of getting out of here.”

It was then about 9 pm on Friday night. I walked over to the departures board and did a quick scan of options. There was a flight to Boston scheduled to depart in 30 minutes from the next terminal. That would do—I could rent a car and drive to Providence from there. I hustled over to the next terminal, where they were already starting to board. I asked the sole gate agent if I could get on the waitlist. She already had too many to list me, she said. But I stuck around anyway. Maybe some people wouldn’t make the connection. Sure enough, I got one of the last seats on the plane.

I called a friend on my cell phone and had him search for a rental car I could pick up in Boston at 2 in the morning. He texted me the info as I sat on the plane, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

Too soon, as it turned out. Just then, the skies opened up, lightning split the sky, and a torrential thunderstorm unleashed itself on O’Hare Airport. The ramp crew scurried away, and the captain announced we’d be delayed until the weather had cleared. Three times, the weather let up and the ground crew set about finishing the loading of the plane, only to scurry back under cover as another thunderstorm cell hit. Then, just as the rain finally abated, the captain came on the PA system again.

“Folks, I have some bad news for you,” he said. “As you know, we’ve been substantially delayed here. And there are currently 60 planes out on the taxiways waiting to take off, and they’re requiring 15 miles in between each departure, so we’re at least 90 minutes from take off, even when we push back. And that means the co-pilot and I are going to be over our crew time (over the 12-hour day mandated as a maximum by the FAA) by the time we take off. So … we can’t do this flight.”

Apparently, there were no spare crews to be had in Chicago. So two hours after we boarded the Boston flight, we deplaned again into the chaos of United’s terminals. I looked at my watch. It was 11:45 pm. The customer service lines now stretched even further down the concourses on both terminals, and I realized that if I was going to get out of Chicago anytime in the next two days, it was going to have to be that night. I raced over to the nearest departures board. I needed to be somewhere other than Chicago. Anywhere other than Chicago. I scanned the board, seeing where I might go.

It was a surreal feeling I’ve never had before, scanning a departure board at an airport like a restaurant menu, contemplating where I might like to go. I didn’t have a confirmed seat anywhere, but at the same time, I had the option of going anywhere United was flying that night. And getting to Providence—which had begun as a straightforward bit of passenger travel—had morphed into an uncharted, multi-step puzzle challenge that I would have to figure out and then make happen myself.

There were only a few flights still waiting to depart, but one of them was a delayed flight to Philadelphia, now scheduled to leave at 1:05 am. That would put me at least in striking distance of Providence. I hustled over to the gate (which was, of course, in the other terminal), while my mind took stock of critical survival items. I hadn’t had dinner, and it was clear I wasn’t going to get to Providence until sometime the next day. So getting hold of some food was a priority. The other critical item was my cell phone battery. As long as I had a phone, I could research solutions.

En route to the gate, I saw one small food kiosk getting ready to close down. I grabbed a wrapped sandwich and convinced them to sell it to me. That would get me through the night. I got to the gate and showed my Boston boarding pass to the gate agent.

“But we’re going to Philadelphia,” she said.

“I know.”

“But you want to go to Boston.”

“Well actually, I want to go to Providence,” I answered. “But Philadelphia will do. Can I get on the flight?”

She shrugged. “If that’s what you want,” she said, handing me a boarding pass.

While I waited, I charged my phone and called United’s customer service to see if I could get booked on a flight from Philadelphia in the morning. After almost an hour on hold (which I could do because the Philly flight got delayed until 1:45 am, due to the fact that the pilots were still en route to Chicago on another delayed flight), I got an agent in India who told me my best option was to get a flight to Washington, D.C. at 6:25 am, and catch a flight to Providence from there. He told me to find a gate agent in Philly to get the necessary boarding passes.

There were some tense moments while we waited on board for the pilots … the flight attendants had reluctantly agreed to do the flight if the pilots would … but at 1:45, the pilots appeared, and finally, a little before 2 am, we pushed back from the gate. The good news was, the long line of planes was gone. We just taxied straight to the runway and took off. I think we were the last flight to depart from Chicago that night.

We arrived in Philly at 4:30 am, where I found a sympathetic gate agent named Andy, who took one look at the six flights I’d been booked on and said, “Oh my God! Surely we can do better than this!” It took some wrangling, and another hour of effort, but Andy managed to get me a seat on a US Air flight direct to Providence that left at 7:38 am. Another US Air agent figured out how to actually get me a boarding pass, because customer service wasn’t open yet … and at 8:29 am Eastern Daylight Time, I landed safely in Providence. My luggage didn’t arrive until Sunday morning, of course, but that was a minor detail.

A travel nightmare? Clearly. But it was also the most free-form adventure I’ve ever had flying the airlines in the U.S. As well as yet another lesson in the benefits of embracing the possibilities of adventure. Had I taken the “easy” route, standing in line and taking whatever alternative United chose to give me, I would have been in Chicago for another two days. But by choosing to become the captain of my own fate, eschewing customer service for a hop-scotch race against time and options, deciding to find my own way to Providence, even if that meant accepting the uncertainty of an airline hitchhiker, employing some very focused, fast thinking and course changes, not to mention hitting a few other unscheduled stops en route to my destination … I got there a mere 10 hours later than planned.

Was it stressful? Sure. But on some level, somewhere after I bought the sandwich and had fully accepted responsibility for finding my own way home, via somewhere on that departure board … it also became just a little bit fun. No map, no guide, no limits, and all that. Which is to say … there is, in the end, tremendous satisfaction in taking back control of what happens next in your life—even when it’s in response to external factors or events gone wrong.