“Real” Winter Conditions Strike Again
In February 2018 I returned to Syracuse…this time for only a week. When the audit team arrived, Central New York was pleasant for that time of year…60s during the day! When I was picking up my rental car I got my choice of cars; obviously I chose the Dodge Charger. I have young kids at home – this is my chance to drive a fun car! In retrospect, this may not have been the smartest choice. No one died though so that is something. As I said, the weather was pleasant at the start of the week. During the week, our audit team took a break and decided the engagement was more like an adventure; as such, we assigned ourselves characters from the Lord of Rings. I was Samwise Gamgy. Towards the end of the week, we experienced what the Northeast calls…the Winter Vortex. A big storm came in, dropping temperatures and dumping snow.
Airport motel swimming pool – view from my room
The storm was forecasted to clear out Friday mid-to-late morning. Thursday night, it snowed all night long. In the morning I started to doubt my decision with choosing the Dodge Charger on the drive to the client. There was a small slope with a stop sign to get out onto the main road…took a long time for the car to get speed and traction to go when the traffic was clear in both directions. At the client’s offices, it continued to snow. The storm did not clear out as expected; two of us were flying out that afternoon. Before leaving we checked our flights and found they were “on time”. The drive to the airport was a little nerve-wracking, as the car slid around on the road; but we finally made it to the airport. We got our tickets (flight still “on time”), went through security, stepped into our terminal, looked at the departures screen and…our flight is canceled…As we stood in line to get more information, my co-worker and I both got notification of our flight rebooking…first class flights the next morning from our layover airport to home!! Okay, there is a silver lining. We stayed at the airport motel that evening, which wasn’t terrible but definitely a step down from our accommodations that week. The next day we first flew from Syracuse to Minnesota, where we caught the first class flight! This was my first time flying first class and it was amazing. The flight attendant gave me a warm wet towel to clean up, following by bottled water, drink of choice (um, red wine please, it was a rough day yesterday), and a meal. The snow covered grounds from the air were really quite beautiful. Winter may have “won” but “losing” wasn’t so terrible.
