Saturday, May 21, 2005

Drip Drip Drip



I flew into Baltimore the other night jumped into my Toyota Corolla rent a car (what a pile) and headed north to White Marsh.
Driving north you have 2 choices either I-95 or I-895, it doesn’t matter which one you take because they merge back together past the city. I always go up I-95 but this evening (just to be different) I decide to venture up I-895. Both roads have tunnels that go under the harbor and tunnels are cool. I am heading down into the tunnel and my usual “Tunnel Thoughts” are running through my head; I wonder what happens if someone crashes in the tunnel? How deep below the water is the tunnel? Has the roof of a tunnel ever caved in and drowned everyone? Didn’t Princess Diana die in a tunnel?
About this time I am at the bottom of said tunnel and starting the uphill journey when all of a sudden I drive through a puddle of water. A “Fricking” puddle of water, its not raining, there’s not a tanker truck in front of me, Oh dear GOD we’ve sprung a leak. I start begging for every bit of horsepower from that little 4 cylinder. I begin rocking back and forth convinced this will propel me even faster. I’m thinking I’m going to outrun this. All of a sudden I see light, light, drive towards the light. I think I can, I think I can…… Safely out of the tunnel I lessen my grip on the wheel and the blood slowly begins to return to my fingers.
The next morning I casually mention to the locals about my “tunnel puddle” experience. They tell me “Oh the water is there most of the time; it’s left over from when they wash down the tunnel walls each night”. Beautiful once again I am proved to be a “Dork”.

I am now sitting at the Baltimore airport waiting for my flight which is now leaving 3 hours after it original departure time (7:00pm), due to the crappy weather in Atlanta.

My flight has just left the ground and reached 10,000 feet it’s 11:41 pm, over 4 hours past my original departure time. Now in a few days, I will receive a letter from Delta apologizing for the delay that I suffered this afternoon.

There was a bright spot during the afternoon. I was camped out in a deserted SouthWest gate with another traveler this afternoon. His flight was delayed as well, and he was talking to his wife on one of those 2-way NexTels. He had it on speaker and his wife was giving him a ration of crap over his flight being delayed. “Hey lady since your husband isn’t wearing one of those nice blue jackets with captain bars on it; I am going to assume he’s not the pilot. Guess what he doesn’t have a whole hell of a lot of control over when the plane leaves, and unless he is God in street clothes there’s not a lot he can do about the weather either”. She did make me chuckle though.


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