Green Bay, Wisconsin

It's always something. And you normally expect something at O'Hare, regardless of season. Yes, winter can be like landing at Yakmuk, Yukon and summer? Well, summer it's the thunderstorms. Had one yesterday. Shut down the place. It's something when O'Hare shuts down. That usually means the cross winds are too strong to land on the runway. It's also bad because the flight attendants have to spend extra time cleaning the soup off the ceiling in the first class cabin. Coach usually just has all the vomit and well, that's just part of the cheaper fare. The vomit has been less these days actually, what with no full meals in coach. ( except for the one guy who ate at Chief's Big-Boy that morning). The vomit from those 'snak-paks' is much much less, and healthier too.

No, our pilot cleverly avoided the tempest and skirted way-the-hell-around to ol' Green Bay, Wisconsin. Quaint from the air, Green Bay IS certainly green, I think mostly from envy of wanting to be somewhere else. Oh, there IS Lambeau Field, which we flew over. Wow, I trembled with awe. The Green Bay Packers. Cheeseheads. Wow. Just...well...wow. I rise from my knees now and continue the story.

We landed and the pilot announced we had to pick up some fuel. No big deal. Big deal. In green Bay. Where they have cheese. Not so much fuel. First had to call the "runway guy" back from supper he was having at Ruth's all you can eat pasta night just east of town. took him 20 minutes to get there. Then I guess his gas truck didn't have enough gas to fill up our big plane. (they just have small planes in Green bay) And, I swear to God we sat there on the tarmac for 3 fricking hours and I did not see ONE plane land. Of, course, it's not football season yet, but NOT ONE? Crikey!

Ok, Clem finally got 'er filled up and then more delays. They didn't take United pilot association's super saver credit cards or something. The flight crew and Clem were having some kind of long drawn out meeting over paperwork and the gas bill. That took another 30 minutes. We hadn't eaten for 8 hours now, so the attendants passed out what was left of the granola-yogurt bars.

Finally had wheels-up about 9:30. The weather had passed over Chicago. In fact, several geologic ages had passed so we weren't sure what we would find - maybe the upper 20 feet of the sears tower rising out of the sand, cockeyed like planet of the apes.

Good to be home.