Travel zoo
I was in Michigan visiting my in-laws. My flight home was from Detroit Metro airport. The weather for my last 30 minutes driving from Ann Arbor to the airport was heavy freezing rain. I saw six cars spun off the road either in the median or off the right side of the freeway.
Once I arrived in the Metro airport area, around 10 pm the craziness began. I stopped at my hotel to check in and drop off my luggage. After I went to drop off my rental car, I made the poor assumption that I could get an Uber back to the hotel.
Well after five minutes, no Uber driver picked up my request. So, I took the bus from the rental car facility over to the terminal. The terminal area was nuts. I found out that the airport had been closed since 8 pm and was not expected to open until Wednesday morning. I tried again to get an Uber. None available! None! Then I found the taxi line was over 1/4 mile long! No taxis were there. They were coming up at a rate of one a minute. A guy near the front of the line said he had been there about an hour.
I called the hotel for the shuttle. I was told due to traffic and the freezing rain it would be 30-60 minutes.
So, I tried another option. When I left my hotel, I noted a parking service across the street. I saw a shuttle for this lot and asked for a ride for $20. The driver (Abdul - not his real name) finally said yes. I ended up as the only passenger. We chatted the 15 minutes we crept back to the hotel area. He told me about the awful drivers he saw earlier. As we got close, he told me he had to drop me off 100 yards or so away. No problem! I kind of skated back to the hotel for four hours of sleep.
I finally got to bed around midnight and went back to Metro around 4:30 am. While walking to the gate, I saw a hundred people or more that spent the night at the airport. In line to get a coffee, a young man told me he had been there since 6:30 pm the night before. It was a surreal scene of tired, sad folks. I boarded a plane at 5:20 am. The airport was still closed but the pilot expected it to open at 6:00 am. No luck.
We ultimately left at 10:00 am after the airport was opened. The freezing rain had continued on and off all night and morning.
I am almost home. I want to thank the following - Abdul (at least I got four hours of sleep in a real bed), Jeff the flight attendant that made the flight as good as possible, Sue the gate agent that rebooked LOTS of passengers and ME for just not getting so worked up. I am going to get home SAFELY.
A real cool story! We have all had some bad travel adventures!