This is a phrase I unfortunately became all too familiar with on the fated day of my "departure," and I say "departure" because I don't think you're allowed to omit the quotations if your plane does not, in fact, leave.
I'll start from the beginning. I arrived at DTW at around 1:00 for my 3:30 flight, parents drop me off, linger adorably, but unnecessarily in the lobby until I'm so far past security that they can't see me anymore (it's endearing and great, mom and dad, we kid, we kid). I get to a gate filled almost entirely with Koreans (a good sign I'm in the right place); I set up camp next to a coveted outlet and crack open a book and everything is on track for my much-anticipated pilgrimage, right?
Ha, no. First, the flight is running an hour late from its last journey in Minnesota (fair enough, an hour delay doesn't really make much difference). It arrives another two hours after that AND has mechanical problems which last another two hours (calm starting to fray...). They then announce that the plane has been delayed so long that the originally scheduled pilots are now beyond duty hours and they must call in new pilots, which was apparently a contingency which they neither foresaw, nor planned for (fuck.). In the meantime, they try to pacify us with pizza delivered to the gate, but we are damn well beyond that point in the evolution of our angry (predominantly) Korean mob. Well, then we do finally get boarded, taxi over to the runway, begin the deicing process, and at 10:30PM the pilot announces that it is now so late that they will be unable to take off tonight by federal regulation (fuckfuckFUCK).
In a storm of sternly disappointed Korean faces, various personal items left on the plane, and Kakao talk notifications (a Korean chat app, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWsFTvX9wNA), we disembark, and queue up to, with widely varying levels of English proficiency, demand compensation for our inconvenience. At this point, however, I was in no mood to generally continue my state of being at the airport, so once I found out that they would hold our check bags overnight, I just called my friend Alan and he graciously came to pick me up and drop me back off at my apartment.
Immediately, I began the Kubler-Ross five stages of grieving.
1) Denial: "Surely this can't have happened, Delta and DTW have always been so reliable in my experience, and this is perhaps the most important trip I have yet undertaken. I can't explain it now, but I bet somehow this was actually Spirit or Chicago O'Hare that fucked this up".
2) Anger: "DAMN YOU, SPIRIT AND CHICAGO O'HARE! YOU ARE EVERYTHING THAT IS WRONG WITH AMERICA AND I KNOW THIS WAS YOUR FAULT!!!"
3) Bargaining: If you think this post is a lot of ranting, you should see the complaint I sent to Delta customer service detailing a lengthy list of demands.
4) Depression:
Two hours later, it's time for round two, and after a pep talk from Muazzum on the way (back, because, ya know, my flight was delayed overnight) to the airport, I march purposely through security full of vitriol and righteous anger (never have I emptied my pockets and placed my shoes in a bin with so much disdain), over to the gate where they had set up a spread of pop and chips: "Spare me your puny conciliatory Cheez-Its, Delta, they are irrelevant."
Well, things picked up after that, as we boarded only 45 minutes late (shit don't even phase us at that point), and--bonded in the crucible of displaced plans, service industry inadequacy, and cheap pizza heartburn--all the passengers on the plane were very friendly with one another. I ended up sitting next to a very cool girl my age coming from Colorado to attend a friend's wedding in Seoul, and chatting with her, about five in-flight movies, several gym leaders in Pokemon Heart Gold, many calf squeezes (gotta ward off those DVT blood clots), and an unmentionable number of 1.5oz cognacs used for spite-drinking, passed the 13.5 hr flight relatively quickly,
We cruised on towards South Korea, and as the Arctic circle, looking like ruffled crepe paper from a cruising height of 35,000 ft, broke slowly apart into the limitless blue expanse of the Pacific, our plane chased the morning sun across half the world and I was feeling much more positive again. While it was certainly an inconvenience, one day in the face of a 5-week trip is not so devastating, though not all passengers were so fortunate. Yet put in perspective, I got a new friend, a lot of conciliatory bonus miles, a good story and blog post out of the ordeal, and we arrived safely; for that I am thankful.
Maybe it's cognitive dissonance, maybe it's Maybeline, or maybe it's just trying to be more positive and accepting of those unexpected detours that our plans have a way of taking--detours that often paradoxically manage to, through excitement and the intangible spice of forced improvisation, enhance the journey, and in the end, make the destination that much more rewarding.
Hello, Seoul, I can't wait to get to know you better.
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