Mad Dash for Midway

The trip to Lincoln's Birthplace was harrowing, the stay stressful, and the return hectic. But somehow it worked. My original itinerary had me flying SFO-ORD-SPI on Monday, SPI-ORD-SFO on Tuesday evening. We got into Springfield and things weren't going so well. I wasn't prepared for the work I had come to do, and stayed up half the night worrying. A crappy hotel didn't help matters. But we woke up, did the work we came to do, came out of it well, and had some time to kill.

My boss and I decided to hit the Abe Lincoln presidential library and museum in downtown Springfield to see what it was about. The tour was interesting, with several good wax figure displays and narrations. The boss and I took off for the airport after about an hour.

Normally, United notifies you by text message when a flight is delayed. I got no such message, and arrived at the airport to find the flight delayed well past 7. That would have put me at ORD with too little time to connect to my SFO flight. Damn...I didn't want to spend the night in SPringfield or Chicago, since I have to travel again Thursday. Other airlines didn't pan out, so I told my boss that we shoudl drive. Screw it...into another rental car, one way to ORD. Then we realized we couldn't make it. So we spent time on the phone with our travel agent, trying to arrange flights out of MDW...and return the rental car there....all of this at 90+mph while watching for law enforcement types... We were sweating the arrival time: it was going to be very close. More than once, the boss commented that we weren't going to make it.

Needless to say, the travel agent came through, got us both booked onto flights...the boss to Providence, and me to OAK. I screeched to a stop at the MDW rental car return with 15 minutes till departure, ran to get my boarding pass, ran to security, ran to the gate, and made the flight with a few minutes to spare...plus I got home much earlier than I would have otherwise.

My routing looked like this. It was one of the more interesting logistical adventures I ever had.