1:00pm
I thought I’d already seen the worst of the temper tantrums in the rebooking line, but a complete tragedy strikes just before I make it through security. Sunday July 17, 2005, the expected hottest day of the year for Las Vegas with temperatures reaching 116 degrees, and what happens? The air conditioning in the airport completely stops working. Maybe it's just terminal C, but the heat is definitely soaking in. I won't claim it's like a sauna, but it is pretty damn close. There were are people passing out, and stretchers coming in, and did I mention I’ve been up for 28 hours? It turns out a car ran into the power line feeding the HVAC building. My 5:30 flight boards just six minutes after they get the A/C back on.
5:45pm
So a full complement of extremely sweaty bodies piles into our Southwest flight. You know Southwest, that’s the economy airline with no assigned seating. You just walk on and take whatever seat is open. I completely forget that on the planes they use, the seat directly in front of the emergency exit does NOT recline. Mother-of-God, why did I pick this seat?
Despite my fatigue, any hope for sleeping on the plane is crippled by not only the non-moving board attached to my back, but also the chatty guy sitting next to me. He redeems himself around 1 am (more about that in a minute), but during the flight all I want is for him to shut the fuck up.
11:00pm
We land at Midway around 11:20, but don’t forget, I was supposed to fly into O’Hare. You see the problem is that I don’t live in Chicago. I live three hours by bus outside of Chicago, and the only bus I know that’ll get me home leaves from O’Hare. Buses leave O’Hare every hour or so starting at 6:30 am with the last bus of the day leaving at 11:30pm. Yeah, I knew getting on the plane I’d be spending the night in a damn airport. Lucky me.
A cab from Midway to O’Hare is probably 100 bucks, so I know my best bet for getting to O’Hare is the city train, the L. The orange line will get me from Midway to downtown where I can switch to the blue line to get to O’Hare.
12:00am
The last Orange train leaves Midway 20 minutes before we arrive at the terminal. All signs say “take the downtown bus”. This is where my chatty single serving friend (henceforth known as Tyler) starts redeeming himself. I asked if he knows how to navigate the public buses. He looks at me and says “Uh, that bus goes through some murky areas, and well, you’re white.”
Murky, says he. He claims to be an artist then uses the word murky to describe a neighborhood’s relative safety. He must be an honest guy right? It was then that fatigue and sketchy dialogue started making me nervous.
Tyler asks “Do you have any money?”
“Money for...?”
“Do you want to split a cab?”
Sure, why not? While we wait for a cab he explains how we can drive to the nearest Blue line station. We’ll split the fare to there, and he’ll take the cab the rest of the way to his home. It sounds equitable to me. Of course, the cab driver is going to try and talk me into taking the cab all the way to O’Hare, but that just ain’t gonna happen.
12:45am
We get in the cab and he tells the driver where to go, then he explains to me that we’ll actually take the cab to HIS house first. We’ll split the fare there, and I can take the cab the rest of the way to O'Hare. I’m still mulling over the possibility of Tyler running out and leaving me to pay for an outrageous cab fare, when he turns to me and says “You know, why don’t you just come to my place, and I’ll drive you the rest of the way to O’Hare?”
Any of you see the movie about Jeffrey Dahmer?
