We flew out of O’Hare at 8 a.m. on January 3rd, just ahead of a blizzard that was moving in. The drive up was uneventful, although the I55N portion witnessed the hours of snowing that son Scott had described to us on the phone.
Since he will soon get to experience the weather from our corner of the world and our house, let’s hope that is as bad as it gets, because weathermen were predicting -17 back in the Quad Cities.
Our plane was to leave at 8 a.m. Surprisingly, the plane, itself, would have left on time, but the DOOR FROZE CLOSED! I’m not kidding! We were to leave from Gate H9, but there was a change to K5 when airport personnel could not open the door through which we were to board! We listened to a poor woman from San Francisco, who had traveled to Disneyworld in Florida, describe the night they had just spent on the floor at the airport, since Southwest Airlines told them the soonest they could get out of Florida to fly home to San Francisco was going to be Monday night! (This was Thursday morning!) She said, “It’s a good thing I’m a Chicago Bears fan, because I had to outfit my entire family in Bears hooded sweatshirts. We had no winter clothing with us at all and had to transfer to other airlines and fly through Chicago to get home.” She added that she was expecting to leave at 10 a.m. and arrive in San Francisco at 5 p.m.
We waited around an hour and then boarded, having survived the taxi ride out. Our driver never put on his seat belt, was weaving all over the road, and took a weird route. People were literally honking at him as he nearly sideswiped the wall at one point.
Now, it is Saturday and we have been poolside for 2 days. The weather is very much like Mazatlan’s, with cool nights, but warm enough to lay in the sun by day.