Why would anyone go to Chicago in the winter for a vacation? That’s a good question. But CVH wanted to see the Big City Lit Up For The Holidays, and Chicago in December certainly fills that bill.
Since the cost of parking is so high in downtown Chicago, and the weather is so iffy this time of year, and Southwest had a sale on flights to Chicago, we decided to fly up.
We drove to the airport. Upon entering the parking lot, where you stop to get your ticket from the machine, I noticed that they had taken down the sign they used to have there that told you what the daily parking charges were. This did not seem an auspicious portent. But we parked, got through security, walked way down to the far end of the terminal (our flights always seem to take off from the last gate on the terminal for some reason), and arrived at our plane not too early nor too late.
However, then the departure of our plane was delayed because the plane next to ours was broken and they wanted to take all the people on that plane, who were trying to get to Las Vegas, and put them on our plane to Chicago instead where maybe they could catch a connecting flight. Now I have no problem sharing our plane with people who had suffered this turn of bad luck, but unfortunately, once all those people were loaded onto our plane, our plane weighed too much to land in Chicago. So they had to call for a truck to come suck some of the fuel out of our airplane. That took longer than expected, because there was a problem with a fuel control valve that balances the fuel between the left and the right wings (which was a piece of information that as far as I was concerned they didn’t really have to share with us).
Once we took off, though, we were in Chicago in no time. I really hope those people trying to get to Las Vegas were able to make a connection that day because they sure weren’t dressed for the weather Chicago was going to dish up that evening.
