After falling in bed at 12.30 a.m Thursday night ( or was it Friday morning?), we woke up and had the whole day to kill before it would be time to take the flight.
Since we had to scrap all our plans to celebrate Manny's birthday at Austin, we decided to buy something at a bakery that we frequented. And Manny decided he wanted slices of all the cakes they had instead of just one cake. So we walked out with big fat slices of Chocolate Fudge, Chocolate Raspberry, Strawberry, Pumpkin Spice and Vanilla Caramel cakes.
I had almost cleaned out all the vegetables in the refrigerator and so we had to settle for a salad and of course the yummy cake slices for lunch and make do with just that. Which isn't a complaint, the cakes were too delicious for words.
Thursday's fiasco was soon forgotten as we got ready to do the whole thing all over again. Leave at 2.00 p.m, park the car at the parking lot, take the shuttle, get to the airport, clear security, and reach the gate. Hopefully our experience would diverge after that, fingers crossed!
Oh, we had been given food vouchers for twelve, twelve solid dollars by Alaska for the horrible experience of the previous day. We used them to buy dinner, but funnily, we didn't buy dinner in any of the places we had, the previous day. That would be jinxing things we thought!
Back to the gate, a different one this time, and we noticed that the incoming flight was late, not by much, but enough for this little quiver of worry in the pit of my stomach. It can't happen again, can it?
We took off thirty minutes late but we did take off and were just going to be a little late, nothing big.
The flight was uneventful and we even had a lightning show at 30000 feet,the likes of which I've never seen before. Portland has tame rainfall, slightly heavier than dew with barely any thunder or lightning to gussy things up. This show went on for about thirty minutes and finally it was time to land. We were starting to descend, but after a few minutes I noticed that we weren't actually descending anymore, but staying steady at that altitude. Were they dumping fuel? That's for emergencies I knew.
I frantically texted the resident aviation freak who was sitting in the row ahead of us asking what that meant and he reassured me that if it were bad, they would have announced it.
Finally after half an hour of circling, we landed, an hour later than the original ETA. We didn't simply land,we landed straight into a thunderstorm.
Chennai has its fair share of thunderstorms and I grew up experiencing quite a few, but this one was something. The rain blowing sideways and the light and sound show that I saw from the air continuing on the ground. And the pilot came on the PA system, to let us know that it seemed like a fast moving storm prevented us from taxiing to the gate and so we had to wait - at the tarmac- the one experience we had been spared on Thursday.
And wait we did a good thirty minutes more, watching the rain lashing the plane and lightning lighting up the entire airport. I was sitting there at the tarmac, watching this fire and brimstone fury of nature and planning ahead.
So obviously our Hertz rental car pickup had to be done without agents because they close at 1.00 a.m and it was already past that time. I had already let the hotel know that we were skipping Friday but would check in after midnight . So the room should be ready for us. I looked forward to the bed in the hotel room so much!
We deplaned, picked up our luggage and walked to the Hertz counter, where obviously there was no one. But a traveller( his luggage gave him away) asked us if we were there to pick up a car and let us know that Hertz had had an outage and we couldn't pick up a rental. What?? This was confirmed by a couple of, it seemed like Hertz employees, who walked in at that moment.
I was livid. Here we were, stuck at the airport, with no car to take us to the hotel. Which was just five minutes away.
We walked out of there and were thinking of options- Uber? Taxi? Then it hit me that hotels near airports have shuttles. Voila!
One phone call and 10 minutes later, we were on the shuttle going to the hotel. That was one knot that disentangled well.
I marched right up to the check in desk and gave the lady my name. After a two minute search, she very gently asked me if I was at the wrong hotel..I was at a loss for words at that point!
Murphy's law in action!!
Here's the Google version:
'This phrase is known as Murphy's Law, which states that "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong." It reflects the idea that if there are multiple ways for something to fail, the worst outcome is likely to occur.'
So one more word added to my Lexicon. Groundstop, crew timing out, and now Murphy's law.
Life teaches you lessons, but I could have done without the accelerated version.
I took a deep breath and let her know our circumstances and showed her the text message I had been sent the previous day, welcoming us to the hotel. That actually helped because they had actually checked us in the previous day and that was why my reservation hadn't popped up on Friday. I had already checked in on Thursday.
Finally, key cards in hand, we took the elevator upstairs and opened the door to our hotel room at 2 00 a.m Saturday, the day we had planned to walk, starting at 9.00 a.m. Seven hours to go.
Bliss! We changed into pajamas and crashed into bed and were out in minutes.
Murphy's law in action was a sight to behold, but I lay in bed and in the few minutes before I nodded off , it hit me - we were exactly where we needed to be Friday night. In Austin, in bed, safe and sound, warm and cozy ,tired but finally contented.
The walk we had planned had religious dimensions obviously, but my friends weren't Catholics and we were undertaking this journey as a mindful walking process.
But God, whatever name you call him by, has you in his sights. As it is said in Isaiah 49:16 -
'See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands;'
It might seem like the walls are closing in, but no, he literally will hold you up and save you.
My friend actually reminded me to include this in the post, I'd almost forgotten it: We have had a habit of praying before undertaking any journey and so we had prayed before we started from home on Thursday. When I reminded Noe to pray before we left on friday, the answer was a curt, "No!" And an explanation, "We already prayed yesterday!" Noe's confidence is enviable. No worrying that God might have forgotten us in his busy schedule, and needed to be reminded again.
And so I went to bed, happy and grateful that we have someone watching over us, making sure things get straightened out and go our way.
And, yeah we got our car rental the next day without a fuss..
The walk was uneventful, and the rest of our trip was' Meh'..but I for once, loved, absolutely loved, the ' Meh'!!
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