Detroit Meltdown

Like I said, getting home is a story in and of itself. I picked up a taxi from CAE to the international terminal at Pearson. CAE is just on the other side of the aiport, so it's only a 10-15 minute taxi ride. It took a while for my taxi to pick me up and I was beginning to worry about missing my flight, which connected through Detroit.

When he picked me up, I had exactly one hour to departure and was extremely nervous about not getting to the gate on time. I asked the driver to get there as fast as he could. As we were heading down Derry Rd. on the West side of the airport, the driver suddenly slammed on the brakes. Out in front of him was a police officer, pointing at cars that had been caught speeding. Luckily he didn't point at my taxi. Apparently, that's how they pull you over. You Canadians are so civilized...wait...civilised.

I made it to the terminal 45 minutes prior to departure. I made it the gate 5 minutes prior to departure only to find that the flight was delayed by 90 minutes. No problem making it. The late departure would make me miss my departure to Cincinnati.

When I got to Detroit, I made my way to the gate area and found that there was one more flight departing to Cincinnati. It was sold out, but there was a Comair pilot flying on company business back to Cincinnati, so I approached him and asked if he'd take the jumpseat so I could get a seat in the cabin. He agreed and told the captain. The captain came down and asked told the gate agent there would be one more seat in the cabin. The gate agent had already closed the flight and wouldn't let me on board the aircraft. It's not good to argue when you travel on pass privileges, so I graciously (on the outside) bowed out and started looking for other options.

The only other option was to go through Ft. Wayne. I was ticketed and about to board when a family of non-revenue passengers with higher priority came and took all of the remaining seats. I was bumped. Faced with the prospect of a night in Detroit was not very appealing. Money was very tight and anxiety was building.

Just as I thought a good day had turned bad, a couple approached me. The husband said, "Sounds like you need to be in Cincinnati tonight." I nodded and indicated that I had been bumped from my last flight option. I introduced myself and we all got to chatting. We got to know each other a bit and found that we lived within 10 miles of one another. Their son was a pilot with Delta and they too had been bumped from the Cincinnati flight. They too wanted to be home that night, but didn't feel like driving. They said if I drove, they'd pay for the rental car.

They said that since I was a pilot, they figured I could drive a car safely too. Umm...ok. I'm in. They had no luck finding a rental car, but I was able to get a one way rental from Enterprise for a very reasonable rate. Withing 30 minutes, we were on our way to Cincinnati which is about 250 miles away.

It was a very enjoyable drive. The husband is a petro-chemical engineer with Ashland and the wife a physician. I stopped and bought burgers for everyone along the way and we had a nice time. I appreciated their generosity and hope to be able to do the same for someone else in their time of need. We made it back to Northern Kentucky by 9 p.m., I dropped them off at their lovely home and met my wife at Enterprise. Pure serendipity.

It was a good ending to a long weekend and a very long day. Storm clouds were on the horizon.