Day 0: Again! I’m stuck in Chicago!

Well, my day got off to a good start.  I arrived at RDU and got checked in quickly.  I went through security in no time and headed down to my gate.  There was an A&W as close to the gate as you can get, so I grabbed a burger for lunch.  At about 1:40pm, we started boarding, and as I got on it struck me how small the plane was.  The walkway did not seal against the plane, which was too small, and when I walked down the aisle my head rubbed the ceiling.  Regardless, everything went smoothly and soon we were in the air.

Preparing to check in at RDU

I did not do much on the flight.  I read for a while and then took a short nap.  To my surprise, after my “short” nap, I realized we were almost in Chicago!  We landed and I was off to the next part of my journey.

I grabbed this shot over Indiana, or so my GPS tells me.

In Chicago, I found the gate for my flight to Delhi and got checked in.  Then I went and found so food to eat on the flight.  Around the time we were scheduled to start boarding, they came on the intercom and told us our flight was delayed by about twenty minutes.  “No big deal,” I thought, “it could be much worse.”  Yes, yes it could.  A few minutes later they came on and told everyone that our flight had been delayed until 7:00am!  We would be given hotel and meal vouchers to stay for the night.  No one seemed angry, though many eyes got large as the announcement was made.  I waited in line for about 45 minutes to get my vouchers.  I tried to switch to another flight the same day, but it would have taken me longer to arrive than simply waiting until morning.

This was my plane out of Chicago

So now I am sitting in a hotel room, planning to get up a 4:30am so I can get back to the airport and continue on my way to India.  I did get a little taste of India as I came to the hotel, as all of the stranded Indians pushed and shoved their way onto the hotel shuttle, then proceeded to pack in as many standing as they could.  So, it turns out that my dinner last night was not my last American dinner, and lets just hope that my breakfast tomorrow really will be my last American breakfast!