As I write this post, I’m sitting on the runway in Charlotte, NC. Sad to say, this is the 4th time I’ve been in this airport in the past week and a half. That’s just too crazy…. The weather here is BAD – in terms of a North Carolinian. Its snowing and there’s about an inch and a half on the ground and the whole city is all but shut down. They seem to be a little more savy than Atlanta who has 6 inches and is completely down for the count. The boards in CLT glowed red with flights cancelled that were going to or through Charlotte.
So, we sit on the runway waiting to be de-iced. And, as the pilot has said, as Charlotte is not as well-versed in the art of deicing, we are sitting behind a row of about 20 - 30 places waiting for the same procedure. The captain has called the left line, in a series of three deicing lines, our line and there are 10 planes ahead of us there. As we’re just sitting waiting, we’re allowed to use computers and phones and so I hear a chorus of “blah blah blahs” ringing around me as people who are surrounded by people chose to reach out to other people who are not present. Its chatter all over as we sit facing our impending doom of a slightly less than eternity wait. My dear dear friend, Kim has volunteered to pick me up from the airport as I’ll be missing the last train home. I’m hoping and praying its not too late that we get in. On top of that I have another 9:30 mission board meeting at the church that I’m already too tired to go to.
So, the Charlotte airport came about this week because I found out last minute, Monday to be exact, that I needed to fly down to Orlando for a meeting. I technically was supposed to be going to Oklahoma for a couple of accounts. I had my flight and so I was trying to cancel my flight home to Chicago on Friday and replace it with a flight to Orlando from OK on Thursday and then a return to Chicago on Friday. With the weather that cropped up at home on Monday, I just had a bad feeling so I ended up cancelling my flight to OK and booking a flight to Tampa on Wednesday, planning to stay by my friends Matt and Karlene and then drive over to Orlando on Thursday. It ended up working out way better and, in fact, the woman who was supposed to cancel my OK flight, didn’t do it and so it was naturally cancelled because of weather on Tuesday. If I had cancelled it, I would have lost $150 but because she made a mistake and didn’t cancel it the day before, I got my full fare back. That worked out nicely!
I got in to Tampa around 4 on Wednesday and headed over to Matt and Karlene’s. We had
dinner together and then Matt brought the three oldest boys to church for their kids’ program. Karlene and I got to hang out with the two little boys. She just had her 5th baby, Samuel, a few months ago. They all look very very much a like and area extremely adorable and pretty dog gone good for being – 5 boys. They’re all named Bible names for their first names and their middle names are after missionaries… Its kind of cool. I actually always remember Benjamin Eliot (Jim Eliot) and Jeremiah – Taylor??? (Hudson Taylor) but then I just lose it and can’t remember the other kids… Names like Jehoshaphat and Ebenezer and Goliath end up coming out. After I spend a few hours with them, I remember them again J The others are actually Elijah Carey (William Carey) and Isaac Judson (Adoniram Judson) and the newest one is Samuel Paton (John Paton). The 3 older boys all are taking violin or cello lessons and they all have these adorable little instruments. So cute! Karlene has always been a voracious reader and so she reads to the boys all the time. There is this one book that she reads that is written by a woman who lived in France during WWII and she and her family helped to hide Jews d
uring the war. My favorite story with the boys is this one time I came to visit and Karlene had warned me that the boys were on a pirate kick and were drawing pictures and acting like pirates. So, when I got to their house, they all greeted me with these pictures they had drawn for me and when Jeremiah pushed his picture up to me, I looked it and laughed “there’s those pirates that your mom warned me about!” Jeremiah looked at me quizzically and then said “those aren’t pirates … they’re Nazis…” They’re always coming out with some funny comment.
So – Orlando was a meeting with some region managers and then I had another in-service that I had to do with about 25 of their inside sales reps. I actually had about 90 minutes but I tried not to over load, or so I thought. I divided my session into two different presentations… pictures and everything! Granted, one never knows what they’re like when they’re actually teaching or lecturing. I think there are some people that know that they’re boring or poor at giving presentations. I’m not that person. I don’t know whether I’m terrible, but in my head, somewhere, I think that I’m
really good. The deep truth is, once I finish a presentation, I always know I’m not really good, but I hope I’m at least mediocre enough to be slightly informative. This session, I admit that at the second half, I saw about 3 sets of eyelids fluttering and even completely resting. But then, I did see others that were intently listening and taking notes. The one good thing I have going for me is, after all my education classes with Dr Jacquot – I do NOT say the word “UM”. No, I substitute phrases like “like I had said” (when I hadn’t actually said it before) and “what I was talking about” (when I haven’t talked about it before). Hey – no ones perfect! At least I know the problem I have – now I just need to fix it J
This is the other thing I hate when I do presentations. When I’m talking about something that I end up making a little funny joke about in order to make the subject more understandable and then I stand there and chuckle – and there are 25 people looking back at me with straight faces. Or, even worse, there are 23 faces looked back at me expressionless, but there are 2 that are doing that pitiful courtesy laugh because they’re just exceptionally nice people or – lets face it – they’re just brown-nosers…. J
So the captain just got on now, as we’ve been sitting motionless for the past 15 minutes, and he announced that “as you can tell, the deicing process is moving extremely slow and at this rate, we’ll be getting up to the head of the line by the spring thaw, so we won’t even need to be deiced”. This is not very promising….
So, we sit on the runway waiting to be de-iced. And, as the pilot has said, as Charlotte is not as well-versed in the art of deicing, we are sitting behind a row of about 20 - 30 places waiting for the same procedure. The captain has called the left line, in a series of three deicing lines, our line and there are 10 planes ahead of us there. As we’re just sitting waiting, we’re allowed to use computers and phones and so I hear a chorus of “blah blah blahs” ringing around me as people who are surrounded by people chose to reach out to other people who are not present. Its chatter all over as we sit facing our impending doom of a slightly less than eternity wait. My dear dear friend, Kim has volunteered to pick me up from the airport as I’ll be missing the last train home. I’m hoping and praying its not too late that we get in. On top of that I have another 9:30 mission board meeting at the church that I’m already too tired to go to.
So, the Charlotte airport came about this week because I found out last minute, Monday to be exact, that I needed to fly down to Orlando for a meeting. I technically was supposed to be going to Oklahoma for a couple of accounts. I had my flight and so I was trying to cancel my flight home to Chicago on Friday and replace it with a flight to Orlando from OK on Thursday and then a return to Chicago on Friday. With the weather that cropped up at home on Monday, I just had a bad feeling so I ended up cancelling my flight to OK and booking a flight to Tampa on Wednesday, planning to stay by my friends Matt and Karlene and then drive over to Orlando on Thursday. It ended up working out way better and, in fact, the woman who was supposed to cancel my OK flight, didn’t do it and so it was naturally cancelled because of weather on Tuesday. If I had cancelled it, I would have lost $150 but because she made a mistake and didn’t cancel it the day before, I got my full fare back. That worked out nicely!
I got in to Tampa around 4 on Wednesday and headed over to Matt and Karlene’s. We had
dinner together and then Matt brought the three oldest boys to church for their kids’ program. Karlene and I got to hang out with the two little boys. She just had her 5th baby, Samuel, a few months ago. They all look very very much a like and area extremely adorable and pretty dog gone good for being – 5 boys. They’re all named Bible names for their first names and their middle names are after missionaries… Its kind of cool. I actually always remember Benjamin Eliot (Jim Eliot) and Jeremiah – Taylor??? (Hudson Taylor) but then I just lose it and can’t remember the other kids… Names like Jehoshaphat and Ebenezer and Goliath end up coming out. After I spend a few hours with them, I remember them again J The others are actually Elijah Carey (William Carey) and Isaac Judson (Adoniram Judson) and the newest one is Samuel Paton (John Paton). The 3 older boys all are taking violin or cello lessons and they all have these adorable little instruments. So cute! Karlene has always been a voracious reader and so she reads to the boys all the time. There is this one book that she reads that is written by a woman who lived in France during WWII and she and her family helped to hide Jews d
uring the war. My favorite story with the boys is this one time I came to visit and Karlene had warned me that the boys were on a pirate kick and were drawing pictures and acting like pirates. So, when I got to their house, they all greeted me with these pictures they had drawn for me and when Jeremiah pushed his picture up to me, I looked it and laughed “there’s those pirates that your mom warned me about!” Jeremiah looked at me quizzically and then said “those aren’t pirates … they’re Nazis…” They’re always coming out with some funny comment.So – Orlando was a meeting with some region managers and then I had another in-service that I had to do with about 25 of their inside sales reps. I actually had about 90 minutes but I tried not to over load, or so I thought. I divided my session into two different presentations… pictures and everything! Granted, one never knows what they’re like when they’re actually teaching or lecturing. I think there are some people that know that they’re boring or poor at giving presentations. I’m not that person. I don’t know whether I’m terrible, but in my head, somewhere, I think that I’m
really good. The deep truth is, once I finish a presentation, I always know I’m not really good, but I hope I’m at least mediocre enough to be slightly informative. This session, I admit that at the second half, I saw about 3 sets of eyelids fluttering and even completely resting. But then, I did see others that were intently listening and taking notes. The one good thing I have going for me is, after all my education classes with Dr Jacquot – I do NOT say the word “UM”. No, I substitute phrases like “like I had said” (when I hadn’t actually said it before) and “what I was talking about” (when I haven’t talked about it before). Hey – no ones perfect! At least I know the problem I have – now I just need to fix it JThis is the other thing I hate when I do presentations. When I’m talking about something that I end up making a little funny joke about in order to make the subject more understandable and then I stand there and chuckle – and there are 25 people looking back at me with straight faces. Or, even worse, there are 23 faces looked back at me expressionless, but there are 2 that are doing that pitiful courtesy laugh because they’re just exceptionally nice people or – lets face it – they’re just brown-nosers…. J
So the captain just got on now, as we’ve been sitting motionless for the past 15 minutes, and he announced that “as you can tell, the deicing process is moving extremely slow and at this rate, we’ll be getting up to the head of the line by the spring thaw, so we won’t even need to be deiced”. This is not very promising….
We finally left, honestly, about 5 hours later... my battery had died :( What kept me sane was laughing at all the angry people who sat around me yelling out things about "I'll never fly US Air again!" and "I'm not going to come to the Charlotte airport"... and my favorite was the pretty, angry black woman who sat in a middle seat talking to herself quite loudly and making the people on either side of her look at her with fear. Finally, she said loudly "they CAN-NOT treat us this way!" and then she got up out of her seat (mind you, the captain had just gottten on and said to make sure we were sitting with our seat belts on because we may be taking off very quickly) and literally stomped up to the very front and the attendant who was in charge there. I heard a really hard hitting sound - on the wall that is - I think she slammed her fist into the wall of the place. Ok - that part didn't make me laugh at first because I got a little scared :) But, most of the comments kept me in check because I wanted to say "SERIOUSLY -- Do you think that US Air is the one to blame for a freak snowstorm in Charlotte when they haven't had snow in like 20 years! GET A LIFE!" I love the infrequent traveller!....
Saying goodbye to the beach that looked attractive even in the 48 degree weather!
Saying hello again to the Charlotte airport for the 4th time in a week and a half!
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