ORD

O'Hare isn't the worst airport in the country, though I might have told you different Friday. At the moment, I'm sitting at one of the courtesy charging stations in Terminal 3 plugged in and WiFi'd up, waiting for my flight back to Dubuque. I just finished a pair of char dogs from the Gold Coast in the little food court around the corner. Tasty, but the guy forgot the sport peppers. Life's about as good as it gets in an airport terminal with another hour of layover ahead.

Chicago-style hot dog from Gold Coast Dogs.
Friday, I was returning to Philly from Dubuque. As usual, I started checking airport delays around noon to see what the evening had in store. The FAA site was already showing delays into O'Hare of close to an hour because of the winds. Thankfully, they didn't grow through the day.

At the airport, the board showed delay. The woman behind the American Eagle counter checking me into my flight (she's also half of both the baggage and ground crews) assured me that the flight out would go and wouldn't even be that late departing. They started boarding at the alloted time, but as we loaded up, the pilot came over the loud speaker, "Well folks, the good news is the ground stop has been canceled ... The bad news is traffic is backed up into Chicago. Dubuque's a small town, so we're pretty far down on the priority list." He went on to explain that we were going to be delayed taking off by an hour and a half, but the time was sliding slowly our direction, so we were going to sit in the plane on the runway ready to go at the drop of a hat.

Thankfully, the delay only lasted 50 minutes in the end and we made to ORD in one piece. We had to swing out over the lake and come in from the east to so the little plane could land in the wind. We had a nice, dancing landing — one of those where the plane waves back and forth on the way in and skips around a bit once it hits the ground — but alls well that ends well, right?

And I lucked out, my flight to Philly was delayed just like the flight from DBQ, so I got to experience the full two hours of layover. I think I've spent more time sitting in O'Hare this year than I have at at the office.

I'll try to put up some photos of Dubuque this week. I fully intended to last week, but the first week on the road after the time off left me a little less than energetic in the evenings.

Enjoy.