Journey to Portland

There is a Japanese saying - "When you have completed 95% of your journey, you are only halfway there". I don't know in what context this was said but it definitely applied to me when I went to Portland in the month of May.

My uncle and aunt had been inviting us to visit their place from a long time. Also my cousin (Reetu Didi) had her baby shower, so my wife and I decided to go to Maine. We were to fly from Phoenix to JFK, New York and from there we had a connection to Portland, Maine.

11th April 2008

As I was putting my luggage in the trunk of my friend's car (who was to drop us to the airport) he asked whether we were flying by American Airlines. AA had cancelled hundreds of flights the same day. I was happy that i didn't book by American. We were taking Delta.

We started at about 8am from our house in Phoenix and reached the airport. Our flight to JFK was on time and we boarded the aircraft. However, due to rough weather conditions at JFK our flight was to not take off for another hour. All the passengers were advised to stay on-board so that if the conditions changed, the plane could take off. After a boring wait of around 50 minutes we had some more bad news. There had been no improvement in the weather at JFK, and due to the backlog of flights there, we were not allowed to take off till about 1.30pm (that's 2 hours more wait). On the positive side we were allowed to get off the aircraft and roam around the terminal with the promise of returning back in an hour.

Our wait ended at 1.30pm and we flew towards JFK. We reached JFK at around 8pm local time. I was worried that we might have missed our connecting flight because of the delay. Therefore as soon as we landed, I checked the monitors and rushed towards the gate where our flight to Portland was to depart. On reaching there I heaved a sigh of relief as the connecting flight was also delayed by half an hour. We grabbed some snacks at the airport and waited. 9pm slowly became 9.30....9.50...10pm. We finally boarded the aircraft at 10.15pm.

Madhavi (my wife) was very tired and I said to her to just relax as we would be there in Portland in just an hour. It was a small plane and that also was half full. Overall 40 passengers in total. The captain announced that we didn't had the permission to fly for another HOUR! (Great!!!!!), and as we had to free up the departure gate for other plane we would be taxiing around for an hour. After around 50min of agonising taxiing, we wished for some good news. Instead the captain announced that the aircraft had developed a "snag" while taxiing and we would have to return back to the terminal.

On return to the terminal all passengers were asked to get down the aircraft so that the plane can be inspected by the maintenance crew. As soon as we came back to the waiting area - I saw one airlines representative asking a passenger - "Was this flight empty?". This made me circumspect as to whether all the excuses being given by the airline are genuine and do they really want to fly us out tonight.

We all waited at the terminal - some passengers talked amongst themselves; some tried to take a nap on the seats while others just roamed around; all expecting some news from the airlines soon. An hour passed by; two hours passed by .....still no confirmation from the airlines as to when the plane will fly....only excuses. The agonising wait continued. At around 3am in the night, the airline announced that the flight is CANCELLED!!. My ears instantly went buzzing by the sound of some @#@$$$ words. The passengers were so angry...if they had to cancel the flight, they could have done that hours earlier. Why did they made us wait for so long?

To make matters worse, the next flight to Portland was at 9am and that was FULL. So we will have to fly to Boston in the morning and a bus will then take us from Boston to Portland (around 2 hrs drive). The passengers argued with the airlines but to no avail. They said that the weather was bad and they cannot do anything else. Some passengers suggested that instead of waiting to go to Boston and then by bus, why don't we take a bus directly to Portland. The airline representatives quickly latched on to that idea and started convincing other passengers. Although reluctant and first, all passengers agreed to the idea slowly. It had more to do with the bad weather conditions predicted the other day than anything else.

30 passengers; two mini-buses; 4am in the night and 6hours drive.

We all finally "took-off". Our bus driver "Vladimir" was going to Portland for the first time and wasn't sure of the way and had decided to therefore use the GPS. My fellow passengers, some of whom were very familiar with the way, instead suggested they knew a few short cuts. So we all decided to go by that. It was drizzling outside and the visibility was very poor. Vladimir, to this credit, drove the vehicle carefully and really slowed down at places where he wasn't sure of the way. It was very cold outside, and we being from Arizona, were shivering. The airlines had packed a few blankets with us on the bus, so we used a couple of them to keep us warm.

We stopped at a couple of rest areas to stretch our legs and to get something to drink. Due to the bad weather conditions it took us nearly 7and half hours to reach our destination - Portland.

Yes we had finally made it to Portland. It had been more than a day since we had left our house in Phoenix to finally reach there. I was wondering that we could have reached India in the same amount of time.

Our luggage wasn't there with us as the airlines had agreed to send it with the next flight. I gave our contact address to the airport authorities and left for our Uncle's house. I was dead tired and went to bed as soon as i reached there.

The luggage came to the house at around 4pm in the afternoon.