Earlier this week I had the misfortune to have a meeting in the Washington D.C. area that required me to be physically present.  There was a blizzard in the forecast, but travel arrangements were made that should have allowed our small party to escape the region before the storm hit.  Unfortunately, our return flights connected through a city that was affected by the storm almost a full day before the D.C. area, and our morning flight was canceled.  Attempts to re-route my travel through another city before the storm arrived were only partially successful.  My travel companions got out before noon, but the only flight available by the time I got through to the travel agent was scheduled to take off two to three hours after the snow was to start.  The airline sounded optimistic, but I was suspicious.

When I woke yesterday morning, I checked the flight board in the hotel lobby and found that almost all of the flights in or out of the airport had been canceled.  There was one cluster, all on the same airline, that still showed as departing on-time.  My flight was among them, and it was the last flight of the day that hadn’t already been canceled.  I was ultimately doubtful I would make it home as scheduled.  However, in an effort not to be hyper-cynical I checked out of my room and headed over to the airport.  The hopefulness didn’t last long, however.  When I got to the gate there wasn’t an airplane waiting, and conditions were rapidly getting to the point that landing a plane would be quite dangerous.  In the two hours I stood there waiting for them to cancel the flight, I don’t think I saw more than two planes land, and neither taxied to my gate.  Forty-five minutes prior to the scheduled departure time the airline announced the landing of the last plane of the day — much to the relief of a bunch of passengers headed to Phoenix.  Those of us on my flight were left to weather the storm and fend for ourselves for at least the next two days while the airline cleared both the snow and the backlog.

To make matters worse, I have another meeting scheduled for D.C. next week.  Were I to take the earliest available flight home, I would have been home for only one day before I would have had to get on a plane and come back here.  The solution… I make the clothes I packed for a three-day trip last for a week and a half and stay here.  Normally, I don’t mind extra time in D.C. because I can spend it wandering the national mall, museums, etc…  Unfortunately, EVERYTHING here is shut down, including the restaurants that would provide any alternative to the expensive and crappy hotel restaurant.   The METRO, Smithsonian, National Monuments, and just about everything else is closed, and everyone who lives here is holed up in their apartments waiting for the storm to pass and the snow-removal crews to clear their path.   For today and tomorrow, at least, I get to kill time in a hotel room with nothing but an Internet connection and 77 channels of nothing to watch on TV.