Grounded

I arrived at O'Hare airport in Chicago a little before 12 pm today (Monday) complaining about the 17 hours of travel time I had in front of me. I was looking forward to about 11 1/2 hours of flying and another 6 or so in airports before arriving in Lithuania. Well, here we are half a day later, and I have spent exactly 1 hour and 3 minutes on an airplane. It is 12:03am Eastern time right now, and my flight to Germany is supposed to be landing in Frankfurt in about 45 minutes. That plane however, is nowhere to be found (really, I have no idea what happened to it) and I am writing this from the attic of my dad's brother's wife's brother's house in Toronto, Canada.

I could complain a good deal about how things went down (or didn't) in the Toronto airport, but we've all had bad flight experiences, so I won't waste your time. What I will say is this, that whole thing about making lemonade from lemons, it's really quite profound. Instead of standing in line to be rerouted for 4 hours with my arms crossed over my chest, grunting at the world, I spent 4 hours in line to be rerouted talking to Evan, Cristina, Thea, and Nikola. Evan is 17. He was born in Canada, lived most of his life in Norway, has spent the last few years in Singapore, and is returning to Norway to go to a sports boarding school. Cristina likes to dance in airports. Well, I'm not sure she actually likes it, but after a few hours in line, and no playing cards to be found, she resorted to making her own entertainment. Polish and in her late-4os, she reminded me of Irene, the caretaker who lived with us when my grandmother was sick. The bleach-blonde hair and mismatched painted-on eyebrows really sold the resemblance. Nikola could not stand Cristina. They had been in line together before I joined them, and well, she did talk nonstop. He was in his 60s or so and on his way to visit family in Croatia. He seemed to think that Toronto is turning into the crime capital of the world. Andlast but not least, Thea. She is a Greek woman, need I say more. She'd been in line since 11am, not because she was travelling, but because her husband was and "he doesn't like to get the ticket out of the little machine." She really doesn't like her middle son's girlfriend and her oldest daughter would be mortified that she was telling me all of this.

I chose the right line. While I was last in it, the man standing near me in the next line spent the entire afternoon throwing darts with his eyes and grunting if someone tried to move their baggage. My line mates would have clearly pulled out the vodka and the guitars if they hadn't been lost with the luggage. The minute I stepped into that line, I was adopted by my fellow wayward travelers and we become a micro-support system for each other. I'd put being stranded in an international airport among the top 10 spots with the potential for the worst in human nature to come out, but I got the best of it. So safe travels to my new friends, I won't be joining you tomorrow am, as doing so would just result in me being stranded another night, this one in Germany. So I am staying in Toronto until Wednesday when I can get from here to Frankfurt to Vilnius as originally planned. Now let's just hope they find my luggage....