That one time I was stuck in Chicago…

This past weekend, I flew to Philadelphia for the 2016 Knowles Fall Meeting! I’ve written a lot about this community and what they mean to me, and this weekend was no exception.

Of course, in order to hang out with them, I had to get there first. This proved to be an adventure.

I started in the Salt Lake airport with a 5pm flight to Midway, Chicago. Unfortunately, Chicago had gotten lots of snow that morning, so afternoon flights were all super full of people whose morning flights had been cancelled. I made it Midway just fine, only to receive an email upon arrival that my Midway to Philly flight was delayed from 9:40 to 12:35. Ouch.

Luckily for me, my friend Sara Abeita was on the same final leg with me, so we propped our feet up and chatted the hours away. When our flight got delayed until 1, I bet her five bucks we’d be spending the night in Chicago. A lot of drama later, they finally cancelled our flight. Sara got on the phone with the booking company and I got in line with the Southwest desk, and soon we had a new flight at 8am the next morning. Several phone calls to hotels later and a thirty minute drive to O’Hare and we slept for three hours before getting up and going back to the airport.

Those of you who know me know that I don’t function super well without a whole lot of sleep. I was completely slap-happy and I thought everything was hilarious! Luckily, I had the whole back row of seats to myself (and so did Sara on the other side) and we both laid down and passed out for another two hours on the plane.

The beautiful thing about all of this was that Sara and I didn’t totally stress out. Lots of people around us were mad and complaining and Sara and I just did what we needed to do and got out of there as quickly as possible. The negativity was overwhelming! I was so very glad that Sara was there, and that we just fixed as much as we could and then went to bed.

Once we finally got to the meeting, though, it felt a bit like coming home. I really really like those people. I like working on my teaching with them and I like swapping stories with them and they really are one of the best parts of my whole life. It feels good to have a rhythm of how we work together, especially with my inquiry partner! We’ve been a pair for two years now, which means I know a bit about Jonathan’s classroom and school (yes, this is a different Jonathan than my husband, and yes, I appreciate the joke) and we both have a good feel for how we work together. I haven’t had this kind of long-term working relationship with someone before, and it means we can do a lot of vulnerable and difficult work I couldn’t do with someone I didn’t know as well.

Also Jonathan from Knowles got to talk to my Jonathan about skis for twenty minutes on my phone, which was the first time they’d met, and it was hilarious and perfect. I like it when my worlds overlap.

The flights home were boring, which is exactly how I like flights to be. Now I’m scrambling a bit to get caught up after two weeks of conferences in a row, but we’ll get there.

Your homework: How do you react to stress out of your control like cancelled flights? Who would you most want to be stuck in an airport with?

Hej då,

Jamie