New York Diary: Day 1

Like every other major trip I have made in the last few years, this one was fraught with drama, despite my going to the extreme length of checking in online the previous day so as not to waste time at the airport.

My flight was scheduled to leave Chicago at 10.35 am, so I figured I'd wake up around 6.45 and leave by 7.30 because the train ride to O'Hare takes almost two hours. Unfortunately, what with sleeping late and trying to keep up with the score in the last India-Pakistan ODI, I only got out of the house by 8, but even so I managed to get to ORD by about 9.35. So far so good.

But that's where the fun started. Looking at the monitors in the terminal, I found that NW 1926 to JFK was conspicuous by its absence. Had I gotten the time wrong? Had the flight been cancelled? I pulled out my boarding card to check the time, and there it was. In big bold letters at the top of the page were the letters M D W. My flight left from Midway! (Note to self: write to Mayor Daley denouncing this devilish ploy to confuse poor Chicagoans by having not one, not two but three airports in the same city.)

It's already 9.40 and I don't see any way I'm going to make that or any other flight. But I wasn't going to give up so easily. I'd been looking forward to this trip so much I'd be damned if a mere airport mix-up would keep me from it. So I jumped into a cab and told the driver to take me to Midway on the double.

At that point I was still hoping to make it by 10.30 and beg and plead my way through security check and make my flight. I even called Northwest Airlines en route hoping against hope that some fortuitous coincidence would have delayed my flight. While that proved to be wishful thinking, we raced down the Tri-State in record time, which made me think that I might still be able to make it. But then we hit the inbound Stevenson, which was backed up for about a mile and I, surprisingly un-panicked, watched the minutes slowly but inexorably tick away beyond 10.35.

Still hoping that some miracle had held the flight up, I raced to the terminal, only to be held up another ten minutes at the horrible bottleneck that is the security checkpoint at Midway (note to self: cuss out Midway administration). When I finally got to my gate, I...

So did I make my flight? What do you think?