I left my hotel for San Francisco International airport at 7:30 AM. By 8:00, I had arrived at the American Airlines terminal. I hate traveling alone, especially flying but it had to be done to get home to the Sausage. Didn’t it?

Curbside check in. Two bags. Piece of cake.

At the security check I took off my sneakers and placed them in a plastic bin along with my bag. The security attendant stopped me and told me I have something in my bag that was more than 3 ounces of liquid. It was a tiny bottle of liquid make up that I forgot I even had. The scary thing is they stopped me for a 4 ounce jar of make up that wasn’t in a clear plastic bag but their x-ray machine scanner neglected to spot the lighter I had just inches away, in the same bag.

Nice. So the terrorists won’t be able to wear make up on board but they can still carry on a lighter that’s capable of blowing up the plane.

Shoes back on and plenty of time to wait for boarding to my connecting flight in Chicago. Just enough time to sit and eat a banana, blueberry muffin and coffee while checking my Blackberry.

On board, I waded down the long aisle to seat 30B. By the luck of the draw, I was seated next to a very tall, dark haired, large-necked, hairy-chested hottie. Hmmm, maybe this flight wouldn’t be so bad after all.

Once in flight at 9:30 AM, I opened up my New York Times to the Sports section, compliments of the Fairmont Hotel and began reading about the NFL draft. I was very taken with the fact that Walter Thomas can squat 800 lbs and bench press 470. The man is enormous but he has a sketchy past so we’ll see.

As it turns out, I start chatting with the hottie and found out he was traveling back from the Ad Tech conference as well. We talked about our mutual interests and exchanged business cards. I told him that our companies should be talking and working together. Even while in transit, I was still doing business….sort of. What a profile. What thick dark hair. What a milky white complexion. What nice big feet…

Time flew and we snuggled under our respective red blankets, put on head phones and got cozy for the in-flight movie, Charlotte’s Web. I confess in that moment of vulnerability at 30,000 feet up in the air as we watched Charlotte A. Cavatica languish leaving Wilbur and her Magnus Opus of an egg sack behind, my eyes welled up in tears and I’d be lying if I didn’t say I had visions of trolloping off to the bathroom and joining the mile high club with Tall, Dark, and Hairy. Or at least slipping my hand under his red fleece American Airlines blanket to grip him with a warm friendly hand.. What can I say...air travel makes me a little crazy. As do the tall, dark, and hairy.

His long legs kept brushing up against mine. Since my legs are short I let him use my space, which allowed for some extra contact. Everything was going rather nicely until we started noticing that we were circling O’Hare for what seemed like forever. The pilot came on and made an announcement.

“Well folks, it looks like they’re experiencing high traffic down there so we’ll just circle up here for a little while until it’s clear to land.”

I proceeded to talk to TDH and squeeze in as much as I could before landing.

The pilot comes back on 5 minutes later.

“Well folks, we have some unfortunate news, the runway traffic is too heavy for us to land at this time but we don’t have enough fuel to keep circling so it looks like we’re diverting to Milwaukee to refuel.”

People started screaming and panicking. A symphony of “Are you fucking kidding me’s” could be heard playing in unison from the front to the rear of plane. Half the people on that plane, including myself had connecting flights to make and not much time to make them. Diverting to Milwaukee would surely put a cramp in our flight plans.

It seemed like a bad joke. Totally surreal. I looked over at TDH and in a very calm voice and with an assuring but coy voice he calmly shrugged, “Milwaukee’s a cool town”. Somehow I didn’t feel panicked. The thought of being stranded in the cheese and beer capital with Mr. TDH didn’t seem so bad at all. Maybe we’d have to hang out and keep each other company. Maybe we’d have to share a car….or a meal, maybe even a room. Hey, people have to stick together in times of distress.

Just then the pilot came back on.

“Well Ladies and Gentleman, we do have some good news for you now. We do have clearance to land at this time, thank you for flying American Airlines.”

Everyone started laughing and clapping, great gasps of relief were heard throughout the fuselage. I guess it was best this way. Everyone was scampering to get off the plane and make their connecting flights. I lingered and kept chatting with TDH. But I lingered too long, realizing I only had 20 minutes to get from gate K over to gate G. We said our goodbyes and planned a follow up meeting in CT in one month.

From there I snapped out of my dreamy state and ran to my gate taking out a few people along the way. No time to grab a sandwich or slice of pizza like I’d planned. They were already boarding for Westchester County when I arrived at the terminal. I shuffled on board the tiny American Eagle with single seats on my aisle and before I could exhale we were taking off for White Plains. It was 5:20pm Chicago time and I was scheduled to land in NY at 8:30.

The second flight was boring and somewhat dreary, not to mention uncomfortable. Every time I drifted off to sleep I was awakened to my neck flopping over. It seemed like it would take forever to land. I had my car service waiting to pick me up and drive me back to my car which was still at the office, another hour away from home. It was a long journey but I was focused on getting home to the sausage.

I started noticing something seemed off after the pilot told us we’d be arriving in White Plains in 15 minutes but that was ½ an hour ago. We seemed to be circling the sky again and I could see the airport lights through a blanket of thick fog. The pilot came on my stomach sank.

“Folks, unfortunately mother nature isn’t cooperating with us tonight. The fog is too thick for air traffic control minimums and we’re going to circle up here for a little bit while we wait for the weather clear.

Fuck!

So close and yet so far…I had a very bad feeling about this. We hovered above the airport for a good 20 minutes and he came back on again.

“Well folks, the fog is just too thick for us to land at this time and we don’t’ have enough fuel to wait so we’re going to have to divert to Albany to refuel.”

Balls!

A business man in front of me became very irate. I thought he might cause trouble or lose it and go off.

Before we knew it, the pilot stepped on some gas and we went blasting full throttle off to Albany through a blinding lightening and fog storm. I felt like he was going really fast because if he didn’t we might run out of fuel. What else could it be? It no longer felt like a plane ride, it felt like a ride at six flags.

I closed my window and wondered WTF would happen next. Would someone freak out and have to be calmed? Would they be able to refuel and then fly us back? Would the weather clear, would it be clear enough to land in Albany? Would we run out of fuel mid air?? As soon as we landed in Albany, everyone powered up their cell phones to call home while we waited for word from the Captain about when we would be flying back to White Plains.

It was 9:30 now, I called my car service and the dispatcher, Bill told me my flight was cancelled due to the fog. He told me he heard it wasn’t flying back to Westchester until 8:00 the next morning. I listened in disbelief..

Just then the captain came back on and confirmed what Bill had been telling me. He said we should go into Albany airport, get our bags and that there would be announcement with what American Airlines was going to do with is.

“Bill, I’ll call you back when I figure out what’s happening.”

Inside, everyone scampered to the nearest Rent a Car desks, ticket agents, train schedules, and baggage claim. Several sketchy men approached me asking where I needed to go and if I wanted to share a rent a car with them back to CT area. I declined and said I was going to wait for the announcement.
Fortunately my bags came through the carousel unharmed. I would have been really fucked if I lost my luggage, so I was thankful for that.

I made some phone calls and assessed my options. I called Bill from the car service and asked if there was anyway they could drive out to Albany to get me. He said it was over a 2 hour drive and he didn’t have any drivers who could go that far on short notice.

I waited with a small group of people by the American Airlines desk and asked them what they were planning to do with us. They put one older woman up in a hotel for the night. Others got rent a cars but the airline would pay for them. As for us, the agent told us he was working on getting a bus or van to take the 6 of us back to White Plains. This sounded like the best option for me. I quickly got to know my fellow weary travelers. There was an older woman with long blonde hair who had been working on her dissertation and she had a son in law school. She lives in Hopewell Junction and offered to drive me to my car when we got back to Westchester. That was a good plan B but I was still hoping the car service would wait for me. There was a younger Pilipino girl, a pre med student who was very sweet. She gave me a kudos bar after I explained that I hadn’t eaten since 9:00 in SFO. The group was rounded out with Middle Eastern looking woman, another woman in her 50’s say who had car sickness and had to sit in the front, and an older man in his 70’s from Rockland County.

We waited and waited for the bus to arrive. The airline agent assured us we’d be in good hands and be shuttled back to White Plains. When our ride came, it was a big rickety white van with just enough seats for all of us and a very unhappy driver. He also couldn’t’ speak English very well and none of us felt like he knew where he was going. Before we took off, some other guy who was presumably the driver’s boss poked his head in and whispered to us to tip him “very well”. The older man, becoming rather crotchety proclaimed, the airline should tip him! The boss explained how the driver had to leave his new wife to drive us on a 6 hour round trip and it was the best they could do.

The six of us piled into the van and took off for what should have been a 2 hour drive. The older man slipped the driver some money and asked to be dropped off in Tarrytown diner which forced us to take a longer route back to the airport, causing us to back track off of 287.

The car sick woman asked the driver if we could stop somewhere for food, It was like a surreal scene from a movie. All the younger people were helping out the older folks, helping them in and out of their seats and making sure they got food first. We looked out for one another taking care and commiserating in our long perilous journey home. About 20 minutes into the trip, the driver pulled off into a Roy Rogers at a rest stop along the way. We all went inside and ate rubbery cheeseburgers and soggy fries, not saying much to one another, just wishing we were home. The driver came in and it was the first time I’d gotten a look at him. Under the bluish fluorescent lights of Roy Rogers, I could see that he was very stern looking and of Middle Eastern descent. In a very cold voice he told us if all wanted to continue we should get back in the van and eat on the way.

We filed back in one after the other, helping each other as much as we could to keep spirits up. Back on the road, the driver took out a portable DVD player and turned it on and handed it to seat behind his. It was a music video of a Middle Eastern woman dressed like a belly dancer singing in a high pitched voice over some sort of whining even higher pitched string instruments and cymbals. It was all too much after 16 hours of travel. Like nails on a fucking chalk board. I was just praying someone would turn it off. TURN IT OFF for fuck’s sake I was saying inside. But one of the passengers seemed interested in the culture and the DVD and tried chatting up to driver to warm him up. His answers were short and scary.

“Where are you from?”
“Afghanistan”
“Oh really, how long have you been here?”

“One week”

“What is the woman on the film singing about?”

“She singing about Love. She want to be with her husband.”

FUCK! How did I go from Tall, Dark, and Hairy to Small, Dark, and Scary?

The reality of the situation set in. I didn’t know if he was just fucking with us or he could have been a member of Al Qaeda for all we knew, but here we were a bunch of clueless Americans trapped in a rickety old van with a pissed off Afghanistan dude who didn’t want to be there with us….all he wanted was to be home with his wife and we were keeping him from her, delaying him for hours. And you could tell he was not happy. He was very serious and very quiet.

Several of us started getting irritated at the older man who was insistent that he be dropped off first but was taking us way out of the way and pissing off the driver. For all we knew he could have pulled off the side of the road, dumped us all out and turned around. Or worse.

I closed my eyes and started daydreaming about how the Milwaukee trip may have turned out much differently. I was thinking of how happy I’d be to sleep in my own bed and to nuzzle up to sausage once more. It was about now I started calling my car service again, every half hour on the hour letting them know when I was getting closer.
12:00AM – tell Bill I should be there by 12:30 and to have the driver waiting.

12:30AM – tell Bill I’m about a half hour away now and should be there by 1:00.
We didn’t arrive back at Westchester until 1:30. Thankfully we arrived in one piece and my loyal driver was waiting for me in a nice cushy Lincoln town car to take me back to my car.
Phew
There were a few times I didn’t think I would make it back at all.
I was never so happy to see my simple little country abode, and my Sausage.