Southfield, Michigan. Anne Mei and I braved the wilds of Newark Airport today to fly to Detroit ahead of the blizzard that’s hitting the New York area. Newark Airport was crazy because everyone else was trying to get out of town before everything shuts down. All flights were overbooked. Actually, I take that back. The flight to Rochester had seats. But on all other flights if you were on standby, you were SOL. If you hadn’t selected seats when you made your reservation. you also were probably SOL.
Anne Mei and I were sitting close to the podium where the agent was listening to everyone’s tales of woe as to why they just HAD to get on the plane, even though they had just booked standby an hour ago. Then there was the guy who had not selected seats for a flight not scheduled to leave for another three hours. The agent found a seat for his wife and told him to be patient because another might open up before his flight. He wanted his seat right now. He didn’t want to go to the gate where the agent said he could talk to a manager. He did not want the agent to deal with all the others clamoring for a seat on our flight, for which the scheduled time for boarding had arrived. He was blocking the podium so she just walked around him to start boarding our flight.
As she scanned my boarding pass, I told the agent “They don’t pay you enough.”
We were escaping the East Coast blizzard, but it snowed in Detroit this morning. Only about 3-4 inches. Nevertheless, just as we were #2 for take-off, only half an hour behind schedule, our plane was pulled out of line to wait 45 minutes for a “ground stop” in Detroit. We never received any explanation for the stop, but at least we were able to take off almost two hours behind schedule.
The rest of the flight was uneventful. Other than chipping the ice off our rental car and struggling to align the driver’s side sideview mirror which the electronic controls could not budge and which could not be reached through the frozen door window, other than that the trip to the Rivkins’ house in Southfield went without incident.
Joe got home today from a hospital-rehab-facility stay. We all want him to be around for his 100th birthday in November.