Friday, December 9, 2005

Driving and not flying

A huge winter storm hit parts of the Northeast United States and unfortunately I was caught in the middle of this storm. I am in Boston this week on business and was planning to come back home tonight (Friday). The weather forecasts were predicting a huge snow storm that was supposed to dump over 25 cm of snow ending early afternoon. I had a flight for Friday evening, so I thought that perhaps my flight would eventually depart from Boston Logan airport tonight.

I left the customer site at lunch to head to the airport. I knew that traffic would be heavy, but I never would have expected the driving conditions could be so bad. The snow plows did not clean the highways that I was driving on, neither were there any lights on the highways. It was total white-out conditions, I could not see anything.

The snow was coming down so fast that my car windows were covered with snow and my wind shield wipers could not move because of the amount of snow. I had to stop on the shoulder and clean the snow off my car, but a few minutes later, the snow was back on my car windows.

I even saw a lightning flash during my drive, at first I did not think that lighting could occur in a snow storm, but later I read in the news that a flight was forced to land because it was struck by lighting on the runway.

As I arrived at the airport, not surprisingly my flight was cancelled. Everyone at the airport was rushing to get on the next available flight. The earliest flight I could get was tomorrow (Saturday), so I needed a hotel to stay at for the night. Luckily, I was able to get a hotel room; all of the rooms were close to selling out. However, the room rates were extremely pricey. All of the hotels were charging extremely high rates, knowing travelers did not have many options.

Today was quite a frightening experience; I was driving alone in a city where I did not know anyone nor the surroundings around the city. I was lucky to have arrived safely at the airport. Today is definitely a day where I am counting my blessings.

4 comments:

Ali said...

Hamdulellah ala al-salaama.

It's good you were able to get a hotel room - sticking the night out in an airport lounge is a thoroughly unpleasant experience.

Din said...

good to know tha your sfae and sound....Ozair!

Ozair said...

Thanks for the kind words.

As I was driving during the snowstorm (which took 3.5 hours instead of 45 mins), I told myself that if I survived, I would blog about my driving experience.

Now, I think that officially qualifies me as a blog-geek. So, I think both Ali and I are official nominees for the AAA: Blog-geek of the year award.

Ozair said...

LOL ... I was kinda joking about thinking about blogging during the storm, cause I have this reputation at work for always getting in trouble whenever travelling.

I knew that this incident would be another story that I would tell my co-workers.

For example, once I missed my flight because I didn't realize I booked my return date the day after I arrived. I was also stuck in NYC when the black-out occured a few years ago ... Trouble always seems to follow me whenever I travel.