I flew from Sacramento to Minneapolis, where Dillon and Daria picked my from the airport and I got to see them for about 14 wonderful hours. Then the plan was to fly from Minneapolis to Chicago, and Chicago to Frankfurt. So I arrived at the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport about 5 hours before my flight (because Daria's was 2 hours earlier than mine) and waited and waited, in a terminal that looked kind of like this.

After waiting about 4 and a half hours, it was announced that my flight was delayed 2 hours. My layover in Chicago was 3 hours long, so I wasn't worried about missing my flight. I was going to have to wait for a long time anyway, what did it matter whether I waited in Chicago or Minneapolis. After waiting abou 7 and a half hours, the flight finally boarded, with an estimated landing time of 3 pm. Not too bad, because my next flight didn't leave until 4:05 pm.

The flight was pretty average. I was sitting next to a rather annoying middle-aged woman with a smile that she employed at inappropriate times in the conversation flow. This woman didn't seem to think much of sitting quietly or minding her own business on a plane, but I had the window seat so I spent a lot of time looking out it and finishing my book "Prodigal Summer."(What a nice cover! If I wrote a book, the cover would be similar to this. Also, I don't have any other pictures to go along with this story hehe.)

We finally got to Chicago at 3:15 pm and it was clear that I was going to have to make a run for it. I had forgotten that, since this was my international flight, I had to go back out to the ticket counter and check in, and then go through international security. I guess that's why they tell you to arrive 2 hours in advance for international flights. And I had 45 minutes.

So I got off the plane and ran, or maybe waddled is a better word since I had my backpack and bag, through terminal 1 of the biggest airport in the country to terminal 5, the international terminal and the farthest terminal away. I always forget how it feels to panic, and since I hadn't really been expecting to need to hurry, I was caught off guard by my own sense of urgency. I must have looked a little bit insane weaving through people, running up and down stairs, cutting off small children from their parents in lines...

This is how I arrived at the Air India ticket counter, short of breath and breaking a sweat since I hadn't taken the time to take off my sweater in this process. I told the small, nice-looking, Indian woman in a maroon suit that I was here to check in for my 4:05 flight, and she said, "I'm sorry ma'am, we're done. We stop checking people in at 3."

It slowly sunk it that the whole time I'd been running around the airport, frantically trying to get to the gate in time, it was already too late. If I'd really thought about it, I probably could have figured out that 45 minutes before the flight was supposed to leave would be too late, but I hadn't really thought about it; I had thought I could really make it. I bet there are a lot of things that we try to make, or get, or fix, without knowing that it's already too late and we're waiting our time, because usually we don't have a small, nice-looking Indian woman in a maroon suit to tell us when to give up.

In the end, I got a very comfortable night stay in the Crowne Plaza hotel, complete with free dinner, complements of United Airlines. When I woke up, well-rested, the next morning, I checked in at the Air India desk, and got my choice of seats. The man asked where I wanted to sit, and ended up giving me my own row because the flight wasn't full. Then, somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, I took a break from the millions of movies I watched and looked out the window and saw the big dipper, right above the wing. It reminded me of that book about slaves on the Underground Railroad following the drinking gourd, so I took this, and the good fortune in seats to be good omens of the trip to come.