Today dawned fair and excellent: bright, clear and cool.
Now, most of you found at least one problem with the
previous sentence. Some of you might
have known that I didn’t come up with “fair and excellent” all on my own. The credit for that, of course, goes to Emily Dickinson.
The rest of you, if you’ve been reading my blogs, probably
know that I don’t normally use “dawn” as a verb. I have nothing against it: In fact, it’s one of those near-anachronisms
that I like. It’s one of those locutions
I really wish I could use without sounding self-conscious, sentimental or,
worse, pretentious. I know I can be
pretty literary (Is that possible?) but I ain’t that literary.
It reminds me of the time Tommy James used the word “yonder”
in one of his songs. I don’t know the
man personally, but somehow I doubt that he’s ever uttered that word in his
life. As with the verb form of “dawn”, I love it. However,iIt’s not the sort of thing one drops
into normal conversations in this culture and time; one isn’t likely to hear it
much outside of church hymns and Christmas carols.
Anyway…back to the opening sentence of this post. What’s wrong with it—as some of you might
have suspected—I didn’t see anything “dawn.”
I slept through it because I didn’t get home until 1:40 this
morning. That’s about three and a half
hours later than I’d planned.
If you live in the central part of the United States, you
might have experienced some wicked weather.
Well, when you guys (Those of us raised in blue-collar neighborhoods in
northeastern US are wont to use “guys” as if it were a gender-neutral term!) in Kentucky and Illinois and other
place were experiencing hail and even tornadoes, much of the southeast and
mid-Atlantic region were drenched and shaken by storms that flashed through the
skies.
Those storms hadn’t begun yet when I was waiting to board my
flight at Daytona Beach. But, as you
know, when Atlanta sneezes, almost every
other air terminal in the region gets at least a cold. And the Hartsfield was experiencing convulsions
and seizures. Hence the delays in
Daytona and other depots.
At first, I didn’t mind. They way my flights were originally
scheduled, I had a layover of nearly two and a half hours in Atlanta. So, a half-hour or even an hour’s delay would
still leave me with plenty of time to catch my flight to JFK, even in a
terminal as sprawling as Hartsfield.
Then again, I figured, my connecting flight would probably be delayed as
well, I mused to myself.
That’s probably the biggest understatement I’ve made to myself
in ages! It had rained in Atlanta, all
right. But an even bigger cloudburst was
on the way. After the other passengers
and I boarded the plane, the skies opened up so much that we could barely see
outside the window. So we couldn’t take
off. Nor could many other flights
scheduled just before and after ours.
And, as it turned out, there were more of such flights than usual
because of the Augusta golf tournament.
Plus, students (and faculty members) were returning from spring
recess. So, all of those flights were
completely booked, which meant that the terminal was packed with people waiting
to board the flights after ours.
Our flight was scheduled to depart at 17:58. But it didn’t take off until 21:20. Yes, you read that right. And we landed in JFK at 23:00. But, according to the captain, there weren’t
any airport staff members to guide the plane into the gate. So he did everything he could to summon them. Finally, we started to exit the plane fifteen
minutes before midnight. By then, almost
all of the concessions in the airport were closed. I didn’t need them, but I’m sure others could
have used a cup of coffee or a drink or something. Even more important, they were connecting to
other flights. The guy sitting next to
me was going to Dubai. That flight was
also delayed, but even so, he had only a few minutes to get to it after we
finally got off our plane.
I got off at a part of the airport that was unfamiliar to
me. I don’t know whether it was my
fatigue or a lack of signage, but it seemed to take almost as long for me to
get out of there as it did to get to it! Oh, if only I’d had my bike with me!
The flight from Atlanta to any NYC airport normally takes a
bit less than two hours. But when I finally got off the Air Train and into the
subway, I realized that from the time of the scheduled departure until the time
I got off the plane, nearly six hours had elapsed. That’s how long it takes, on a typical day,
to fly from JFK to CDG. I’m sure someone
on my flight was going there. I hope
that person caught his or her flight!
Maybe I’ll ride my bike down to my parents’ next time I
go. Of course, I’ll need a longer recess
for that. As for today, I slept late and
was still tired, so I didn’t ride. I
hope I will tomorrow.
