Plans Disrupted

So I battle a raging snow storm to get to the airport and driving up to the gate at our hanger I hit the brakes on my 6,000 pound Expedition EL and nothing happens. The driveway was so slick the anti-lock brakes wouldn't allow any braking at all. I slowly rolled right into the gate! The poor guard saw me on the video cam and tried to open the brutally bent gate not knowing the damage me and my behemoth vehicle had done. Par for the course. I was running late due to the storm, bent the gate silly and now we made our way to the terminal for the next phase in my odyssey.

After an uneventful check-in and security screening, we strolled to the gate, (the one at the very end of the concourse), and were quite surprised to see a jet parked there. In my mind, I was sure there would be no airplane there because of inbound delays. They were unloading bags and we knew we would be running late but things looked promising. We had about 40 minutes to catch our connection in Minneapolis. It was going to be tight but we had a good shot. Well, we boarded 20 minutes before scheduled departure so things were still looking up but that is where the good news ends. We sat there over an hour. When we finally did push back we had to go to de-icing. Bottom line we took almost an hour and a half late. We did have a faint hope that the connecting flight would be delayed.

After we landed in Minneapolis I scanned the terminal for our connecting flight's gate and much to my surprise there was a 757 parked there which is the kind of airplane we were scheduled to fly on. We had a shot. We jumped off the airplane and ran to the gate only to see the jetway being pulled back and the airplane pushing back. We missed by the slimmest of margins.

So, we get a night in Minneapolis which meant dinner at the Twin Cities Grill at the Mall of America. NWA has us on a flight out at 1140 am today.