The flight over to NYC
The time is 3:45 am, it is dark in my room. Suddenly my mom rushes into my room turning on the light and says, “Get up! We don’t want to miss the flight!”
I turn over in my bed and reach for my phone, 3:46 am – on my birthday…
I roll out of my bed and put jeans and a sweatshirt on, on drag my rolly bag down the stairs with the nice soundtrack of, “thud, thud, thud thud…”
I check my phone again, 3:53 am and no “Happy Birthday!!!” yet. I walk in the kitchen and grab coco puffs, a bowl and spoon and some milk, and have a snack before the 6.5hr flight to Chicago OHARE airport.
I look at the oven clock when I finish my cereal—which is always off by 2 minutes—4:00 am.
I hear a knock on the door, “The taxi is here!” my dad yells way to loud for 4 in the morning. As my dad opens the door, I heard what I did not want to hear, rain.
A taxi ride and we are in Sea-Tac airport. 30 minutes through security and we are at the gate, H11. The only thing I remember after that was boarding, finding my seat and sleeping.
I wake up to the “bong” that comes before the Captain says, “We have started our decent to Chicago and will be on the ground in about 35 minutes.” I fall back asleep.
I feel the jolt of the landing gear smacking the ground; the eagle has landed. The next thing I hear after coming to a grinding halt is the Captain, “On behalf of American Airlines, we would like to welcome you to Chicago’s OHARE international Airport….” This went on a while, until we reached the gate.
Then we stopped at a Starbucks – one of many—my mom then says to me and my sister, “Oh My Gosh! I completely forgot, Happy Birthday!” 1:29 pm Chicago time. I look to her and I say, “…Thanks… You know you could have gotten away with that...” Then she looked at me and asked for the time, 1:37 pm, “Oh crap! We have to run!” so we proceeded to run to our gate 5 minutes before boarding.
Once I had found my seat, I put away my things and sat back in my chair clutching my Starbucks, and fell asleep – again. Until my dad woke me up and said, “Look, you can see NYC from here.” We were planned to land in LaGuardia airport. 30 minutes later… THUNK! We’re in NYC!
Fast forwarding through the traffic and hotel settling into parts. It is now 11:49 pm NYC time and in the Empire State buildings elevator on the way up to the observation deck. 10 grueling minutes later, I open the door to go outside and whoosh! A huge rush of warmish humid air in the face and a breath taking view of NYC.