Christmas is Canceled!!!

Well... almost.

Shayla and the kids headed to Utah last Wednesday. The plan was for me to meet them there today. We were then going to drive down to California on Sunday and head to Disneyland with the entire Losee family on Monday.

Unfortunately, Mother Nature had other plans.

A couple days ago, people around here started talking about snow coming in this weekend. Yesterday, they started talking about it a lot more. When I left work for the day, that's all anybody was talking about! The DJ's on the radio couldn't stop talking about the coming storm as I made my two-hour drive home through the snarled mess of Washington traffic (It's usually only one hour, but the impending storm seemed to make it worse).

At about 9:30 last night, the first few flakes started to fall. It's now 7:30 pm a day later, just two hours shy of a full 24 hours, and the snow hasn't let up once!

I was scheduled to leave Virginia this morning, but as I was sitting in congested traffic last night, a nice-pleasant sounding, previously recorded voice boomed to me through my cell phone's speaker... My flight was cancelled!

When I got home I immediately called the airline, only to be put on hold for 30 minutes. When I finally got through, I was able to reschedule for another flight that would leave just eight hours after my canceled flight. I asked the nice lady with the thick Indian accent on the other end of the phone if there was a good chance that my rescheduled flight would be canceled as well. I mean, it's snowing outside right? If the first one got canceled, why not the second? She assured me that the airport would probably have things under control and the runways cleared by then, but if it did get canceled, I could simply call back and get a flight for Sunday, after the storm cleared.

Sounds good enough to me.

So I get another call this morning at precisely 6:30 am. It was the same familiar pre-recorded voice telling me that my flight had, once again, been canceled! Great.

I contemplated falling back to sleep. The snow falling outside the window made the room seem colder than it really was and I was in no hurry to leave the comfort of the warm blankets surrounding me.

But then I thought, if my flight got canceled, then that means all the other flights for today have been canceled too. That means there are going to be hundreds, if not thousands of people trying to reschedule flights and if I wanted to get on the next plane outta here, I'd better give the airline a call before they all fill up!

Needless to say, I jumped out of bed, rubbed my eyes and stumbled into the living room where I plopped myself on the couch and called United Airlines. My call was promptly answered by, once again, the friendly pre-recorded voice. He gave me a few options along the lines of, "To check in, please press 1, to search for a flight, please press 2", and so on and so forth. Unfortunately, there was no, "If your flight has been canceled and you want to rip United a new one, please press 5" option. After stumbling through the menu for a couple of minutes, trying to figure out how I could talk to an actual, live human being (do they even make those anymore?) and pressing 1, 2, and 3 more times than I can remember, I shouted in frustration, "Aaaggghh!!! I just want to talk to somebody!!!!" To which the nice, pre-recoded voice said, "You would like to speak to someone. Is that correct?"

What? You mean all I had to do was just say that I wanted to talk to somebody and you'd put me right through? You mean that for the past two minutes I've been hitting buttons on my phone like a lunatic, for no good reason? You mean that this whole, "press the buttons" menu is just a front and you acutally know what I'm saying?!?! YES, I WANT TO TALK TO SOMEBODY!!!!

"Just one moment while I connect you" came the pre-recorded voice over the phone, followed by a moment of silence. A few seconds later, my new friend, The Voice said, "Due to the unsually high demand of phone calls, all of our representatives are busy. Your estimated hold time is over 60 minutes".

Wait, did I just hear that right? Did The Voice just say 60 minutes?!?! You're joking right, Mr. Voice?

Um, nope. He wasn't joking. In fact, he was being modest. Two hours later (almost exactly) I was finally connected to a real live human being! YES!

I was able to get things sorted out. The real live human told me that Washington/Dulles International Airport was closed for the day. Really? Closed? You don't say!

All of the flights for today, including mine, had been canceled. In fact, the next available flight out of here wasn't leaving 'till Monday! Well... sign me up!

I won't get to Los Angeles 'till Monday night. The nice thing is, they were able to get me on a direct flight from here to LAX, instead of my original Las Vegas destination, for no additional charge. As we were going to be driving to the Golden State on Sunday, now I'll just fly and meet everyone there on Monday.

So now that I've got my flight all figured out (hopefully), I'm just going to sit here with nothing to do for the next 43 hours 'till Monday afternoon. Feel free to leave a comment. It'll give me something to read as I sit here in my frozen boredom.

Just for fun, here's a few little tidbits about this storm. Take note, 'cuz someday your kids are going to be learning about this snowstorm in school!

- There is 19 inches of snow outside right now. All of that has fallen in just 20 hours. That's almost an inch an hour!

- It is still snowing.

- This storm has broken the prevous record for the "Total snowfall in a single storm for December" category. That record stood at 12.4 inches and was set in 1932.

- It is still snowing.

- When this storm is gone, it will probably, according to one weatherman's predictions, rank as one of the top three worst winter storms in the history of Washington DC. That's going all the way back to 1790 folks!

- Yeah, that's right, that's 219 years!

- A couple of the nicknames floating around the news channels for this storm include "Snowzilla" and "Snowpocalypse".

- It is still snowing.

- Still.


(I have just learned that church will be canceled tomorrow, and the schools are going to be closed both Monday and Tuesday! Crazy!)

For your viewing pleasure, please take a gander at the following photos.

These two photos were taken just four hours apart. The second picture is a little harder to see, but it reads 19 inches. That's an additional 6 inches!

This was measured on the hood of my truck. I pulled the tape out an additional three inches to compensate for the height of the measuring tape case. That's 19 inches of snow!

These next pictures were taken on the road outside our
apartment complex. It's usually a semi-busy five
lane road. Not today!

This last pic was taken about 30 minutes ago. Out in the parking lot.

And finally, one little video and then I'm done.