3 minutes is a lifetime to me

Many of you have read my email or heard the story of my haphazard trip across the country.  But to elaborate...

My plane leaving Charlotte was originally going to be 45 minutes late.  45 minutes, not a problem I said with a smile.  About the time my plane was supposed to leave we were told that there was a mechanical problem in NY and that it hadn't left yet, now it would be about two hours.  2 hours, not a problem.  I had given myself five hours in NY for a reason, plenty of time to make up for delays.  A few minutes later I met my first friend on the trip.  Zac was also on my flight to NY and then to Italy.  He had seen my travel book and come over to chat.  We now got to joke around together about how late this plane was.  About thirty minutes after that we were given lunch vouchers so we got free food and everything was still ok, we had plenty of time.  When we got back from lunch we were told the plane wouldn't be leaving until 12:30.  3 hours, might be a problem.  Another thirty minutes passed as Zac and I started to get nervous.  "Ladies and gentlemen, I have just gotten an update and you should be able to take off by 1:30, thank you for your patience."  4 hours is definitely a problem.

4 hours is definitely a problem.

We finally left Charlotte and Zac and I were willing the plane to fly just a little faster.  When we landed in NY we ran through the terminal to find a wall of security guards who told us that to get to the next terminal we had to take a bus and they couldn't open the door until their were more people.  It was about 3:30 and we didn't even have our luggage yet.  Our plane was to leave at 5:05.

We ran to baggage claim and got our bags as quickly as possible, which was not fast enough.  We then ran with two little old ladies from our flight through the airport to the air train to get to yet another terminal.  The little old ladies had an international flight too but had packed much lighter than our 80 lbs of luggage a piece.   I'll just say those 70 yr olds were spry.

When we finally got to Air France we begged the woman at the head of the line to help us as it was now 4:00.  She let us skip the rest of the line and two ladies rapidly checked us in.  The lady looked at me and said, "flight closes in 3 minutes, you barely made it."

Three minutes is a lifetime to me.