It Took A Village — Including A Trip to the Village of Bala Cynwyd
This blog was supposed to be written three days ago but was unfortunately delayed due to the last 72 hours. To say it was an eventful experience wouldn’t do it justice, but nobody likes complainers, so we’ll go with eventful.
My journey on Remote Year was supposed to begin on Friday, March 2, 2018 at 5:30pm with a short flight from DCA (Washington, Reagan) to JFK (New York City) and then from there a flight over to London with a 9-hour layover and then 12 hours onto Cape Town with an arrival in Cape Town on Sunday, March 4, 2018 at 8:15am. Now let’s focus on the key word in that sentence, supposed too…. Unfortunately, Mother Nature and American Airlines had other plans for me.
A little back story…. I have quite possibly the worst luck when it comes to travel. I have been flying since I was 6 months old (this is what happens when your family mainly lives in the Midwest) and since then I have been delayed for:
- Weather (rain, snow, sleet, thunderstorms, wind)
- Freak accidents — a train blew up behind me once in Germany and someone was hit by an L train in front of me once
2. Supposed weather aka fight crew didn’t show up on time
3. Issues getting to the airport on third party transportation, such as a bus or metro train
You name it and it’s happened to me. And other odd things such as the time my flight out of South Bend got cancelled and then when I was waiting for my cousin to pick me up I lent my cell phone to someone to make a quick call only to find out minutes later that he had escaped from mental institution 4 hours away. How did I find out you ask? Well the institution called me, his family had been looking for him for days and I had to stay at the airport and wait for the cops to show up to retrieve him.
But this time around it was good ole weather and I will admit it was bad Friday. Had I realized the gravity of the situation I would have made a different decision, but hey you make decisions based on the information you are given. It’s also ironic that the last time I moved out of the DC was 6 years ago to go to grad school in San Francisco and we had really bad weather as well, the Derecho, DC just never wants to let me go.
Ok so back to Friday….
Around 10am Friday after I got out of the shower I learned my flight to JFK had been cancelled that evening. At the time I had thought the high winds and weather from the day before had largely subsided, so I calmly called American Airlines (see calmly…. that state of mind did not last long). When I was able to speak with an agent she laid out two options for me:
1. Take a train or drive to Philadelphia and catch the 9:10 flight to London Heathrow and then transfer to London Gatwick to make my original connection to Cape Town
2. Leave 24 hours later on the 8:00pm out of BWI and get into Cape Town (via London, no airport transfer) on Monday at 7:45am
I went with option 1 because it wasn’t unmanageable, and I really wanted to start with my group on Sunday. If you’ve read my previous blogs you know I’ve been preparing for this trip since July, so anything I could do to stay on course I was willing to do it.
Now Philadelphia for me is normally a 2.5-hour drive even in moderate traffic, but I didn’t want to deal with driving so I quickly bought an Amtrak ticket. Thank goodness for my mother who literally dropped everything she was doing to get me to the airport train station in Baltimore. I did have a minor freak out/melt down during all this rescheduling and my bag also broke. Of course, Mom to the rescue who promptly lent me one of her favorite carry on Vera Bradley’s and said don’t worry about it, I’ll get it back from you when I visit.
So off Mom and I were to the BWI airport train station, yes take note of where I was now going, an airport to catch not a plane, but a train. Now this is common around my parts to go to the BWI train station as it is cheaper and easier to get to than downtown DC, so I thought I was in luck when there was a seat on a train leaving just two hours later. I should have known something was up though as I was driving the wind was really starting to pick up and it was becoming increasingly difficult to control the car.
As we pulled up to the train station there was a small line of cars and the sheriff. I was confused but thought maybe a small incident had occurred and they were just directing traffic into the station. As I pulled up to the officer he told us that there was glass blowing into the garage from a broken window in the station and it was safer to get out here and walk to the station. So, I literally said goodbye to my mother for what will be likely 7 months in the middle of a road at a train station, talk about anti-climactic. But I was going a million miles an hour and we said our goodbyes quickly and I walked to the station.
When I walked into the station I should have just turned around right there and gone home, but I looked at the board and it said my train to Philadelphia was delayed, but no determination on when it would depart. I waited for maybe 15 minutes and then saw the other trains from earlier in the day still hadn’t left, there hadn’t been Amtrak service since 11am, it was 1:30pm. At this point the window on me making the flight in Philadelphia was closing, so I went to the window to get a refund for my ticket and the woman pretty much agreed with my decision because she said trains likely weren’t getting out today. Again, another red flag, but my adrenaline was pumping so I said screw it, let’s drive to Philly.
Since I was at the airport (which in retrospect I should have just gone to American then and rescheduled my flight) I knew there was a rental car facility nearby. I quickly booked a car on my phone and then 25 minutes later I was in a car.
Almost as soon as I got onto the highway though things just went from bad to worse. The wind was really starting to pick up and at points it was so bad you could hear the wind blowing through the fiberglass of the car. Additionally, I was getting calls and texts from family saying 95 north was closed, so I’d have to take a heck of a lot of back roads to get to Philadelphia, but at this point my flight was still on time and I needed to do whatever I could to get to Philadelphia.
2 and a half hours later I still wasn’t there, traffic was backing up and somewhere in Darlington, Maryland about 60 miles from Philadelphia I got a message on my app that my flight was cancelled, and they could only reschedule me for 2 days later. I tried my very best not to freak out, but there were several curse words said, tears shed and frantic calls to family members. Unfortunately, due to the terrible phone service it took a while to talk to people too and even my step-mom who works at a travel agency tried to get her co-workers to help, but it was determined my best course of action was to talk to an agent at the airport since the phone wait was over 2 hours.
So, at this point I was tired, sad, hungry, hadn’t gone to the bathroom in hours and still had a 60-mile drive left in some of the worst traffic and weather I’ve ever seen. The winds were gusting at likely 70 miles an hour and it was starting to snow. At one point I had to cross the Conowingo Dam (see below) — which looks pretty in the day, but at night and in this weather looks like that scene from Hunger Games when District 5 is revolting against the Capitol (see second picture below). At this point since I wasn’t in a time crunch it was just about getting to Philadelphia Airport alive (also my USA insurance was void as of February 28, so if anything happened to me I wouldn’t be covered……stupid US insurance system, but that’s for another day).
Now thankfully I made it to Philadelphia Airport and if you saw my Instagram and Facebook posts not much changed when I got there. Sunday was the best they could do and the only improvement I made between now and then was I got some window seats by calling the American Airlines rep.
Throughout all of this I had been talking to my parents and my seesters. No, I’m not having an aneurysm I spell seesters like that because Ga and Sionne are not my blood sisters, but since I was 5 years old these two have been siblings to me. Our parents are good friends, Ga and I are the same age and are best friends in addition to seesters and Sionne (who is 4 years older) has always been a confident and role model for us both.
Once I realized I was spending two days in Philadelphia I needed somewhere to stay (American doesn’t comp rooms when it’s weather related). And there was Sionne, my savoir, with arms wide open. She said just Uber on over here (too dangerous and silly for her to drive then) and stay as long as you want. Just seeing her face at the end of that terrible day was all I needed, but her, her husband and dog’s hospitality continued throughout the weekend. And even though I didn’t have a proper goodbye with my parents, I did with Sionne just last night.
So why the title of this piece? Well as you know I’m obsessed with Hillary Clinton and I was going to name this blog this same title even before all the events over the past 36 hours. But I added the last part because my seester lives in a village, the village of Bala Cynwyd (pronounced Kinwood). It is a gorgeous place and one that appeared right when I needed it most.
So, to all my family, friends, seesters thank you so very much for your support over the past few days and even 8 months leading up to this journey. All your kind words, support and wisdom were so helpful, and you will never know how grateful I am. As I’ve said many times before I really do have the best family and friends in the whole wide world.
It took a village to get me here, but as I type this I am getting ready to board my flight to Cape Town and I had a great day meeting up more of my family — my cousins who are in London celebrating my cousin Eric’s 30th.
Until next time my friends.
And check back on later this week for the meaning of Ohana. Why am I posting this Hawaiian word all over Facebook/Instagram?
