Off to a Bumpy Start

This morning at 7:00am we left Muskegon to get to Chicago. The plan: arrive by 10:00am to catch our flight at 1:53pm to Miami. Then, go to our hotel for the night and get up tomorrow to go on our cruise.

In Benton Harbor, we hit a snow blizzard. And it took us two and a half hours to go about twenty miles. Most of it was just sitting, waiting, getting snowed in. I would guess at least 12 inches fell while we were waiting. We saw several semi trucks off of the road, as well as cars, vans, and trucks. But we got through that.

We were in Chicago and had just gone through a toll both when our car started to make a strange noise. The first thought was we blew a tire. But we hadn't lost control, and it wasn't pulling to the side or anything. When the noise got worse, we took an exit. We looked, and nothing appeared to be wrong. So we got directions, and tried to get back on track. The noise, however only got worse. And now, it was pulling off to the side.

We ended up turning down some random side street. We saw a church, so we went there as people were entering. They barely let us in. The guy was like, just wait out here. We asked if maybe anyone there would bring us to the airport. He replied that the service just started, so no. (I had forgot it was even Sunday). So we called a cab. And Daniel. We had no idea what to do. If we didn't make our flight, we would have wasted the money for the cruise and the flight. We had to get to the airport.

I noticed a guy shovelling his sidewalk. Hoping he was trustworthy, we asked him if he would bring us to the airport. He laughed at the idea we would make it there on time if we waited for the cab. Ironically, he works for the airport shuttle service. Reluctantly, he took us to the airport. We left our car key with him. There appeared to be no better option.

We got to the airport at 1:00pm. We mentioned that we had a bad day, and the lady at the check in counter said tell me about it, I had to make it to work today. We were like, yeah, we were in a blizzard. She laughed. What blizzard? Anyway, she was really friendly. And we got through security within fifteen minutes. We sat down for about two minutes and they started boarding our flight.

Once onboard, it sunk in what had happened. And I was nauseous the whole time. Our flight arrived at the Miami airport early. We called our hotel for the free shuttle, and waited for our baggage. When we got to the hotel, we just took a big, deep breath. What a day.

And we hadn't had anything to eat since 6am. We made a few phone calls, and tried to relax. We ordered pizza at 7:45pm. The pizza guy arrived promptly at 9:15pm, out of breath. It only took him twice as long to get here as it was supposed to. He was quite interesting. Apparently, he had been pulled over on his way here for speeding. He spoke broken English so it was difficult to understand.

"Hey man, I've had a hard day too. I understand" - Tony

We had ordered a supreme pizza with the black olives only on half of the pizza. We open it to see supreme on one half, and only black olives on the other. We just laughed.

Also, we realize that the entire town is preparing for the superbowl. There were about eight reporters flying into Miami on our flight. And before we took off the captain said "Go bears" And the passengers quickly replied "Go bears."

I could not have imagined a more creatively worse day. Either way, we are in Miami, and we are going on a cruise tomorrow. And when we get back to Chicago, we will have a ride home, and everything else will work itself out.