Last Sunday I was not in Cincinnati. I was winding up a trip to the annual conference of the Association of Independent Information Professionals (AIIP), an organization that I helped bring into being in 1987 in Milwaukee. It was the first conference save one that I had attended in a dozen years, due to my residence in Spain. It was welcoming and inspiring to meet with old friends and to make the acquaintance of new ones whom I had not met at all or whom I knew only through the electronic discussion list that the organization shares. AIIP is a small, intimate conference , and the personal associations and tradition are what have kept me a member and now brought me back to this face-to-face meeting after so many years.
It was a short visit, but a long trip out to Irvine, California by way of Dallas on Thursday a week ago. It was an even longer trip back, by way on Chicago, on Sunday last week. It was long enough that it extended into Monday. I had a perfect flight from Santa Ana's John Wayne airport in Orange County to Chicago's O'Hare. As soon as I landed in O'Hare I went to the gate for the connecting flight and discovered that we were delayed for an hour, waiting for an in-bound crew to arrive and get over to our gate. No problem, I thought. I was scheduled to arrive in Dayton late and had arranged to meet my husband at an airport hotel for an overnight, so we didn't have to drive home at 11:00 PM. Since I now would be arriving at midnight, I was very glad that I had made that arrangement.
The crew arrived and we finally got on. Then we got off the plane again when they discovered a malfunctioning door to the baggage area. Then we got on again, and in due course an announcement came that we were delayed again, because the door they thought had been fixed really was not right. This time we were advised that we could get off if we wanted, or we could stay on if we wanted, while the repair was made. I stayed on. Some time later the fatal announcement came that the flight was cancelled. Off we got to stand in line to get hotel and meal vouchers, and then to find our way to the shuttle bus to the Hyatt Regency O'Hare. That was a hurdle itself, and when we got to the Hyatt, there was another line to check in, and of course the restaurant had closed for the night, so I had to settle for a cold salad from the convenience shop. Then we had to call the airline to confirm our passage on the 7:00 flight the next morning, and of course there were long delays in the telephone queue. When I finally hung up my clothes for the next day and climbed into bed--a fairly quick process since I had no luggage with me--I called the front desk to leave a wakeup call--and was greeted with "Good morning" before I even asked for a call just three and a half hours hence. When I checked out at 4:45 that morning, the front desk clerk asked me solicitously if I had enjoyed my nap.
The morning flight to Dayton went well--all forty-five minutes of it--but the new crew seemed blissfully unaware that it was transporting a plane full of friends-by-circumstance who had been through a very long evening and very short night together. I dragged myself through the day when I got home, but it took another two days before I really caught up on sleep. And only today did I put the receipts from my trip in order and locate the notes and cards and other papers I had gathered through the conference. It was a memorable trip, but worth it.
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