six things i learned at O'Hare -- one for every hour i was there!

So, I went to Chicago and Iowa this weekend, and had the great luck of flying through O'Hare. Twice. And on the first half, I got screwed only because my sister was driving an hour to pick up my mother and me (who were on different flights, on different airlines) and my mother's 7:30 flight was delayed three hours, while my 8:00 flight was on time. In an effort to spare my sister from driving there twice, I told her to split the difference, I could sit in O'Hare for a few hours.

Silly me.

And on the way home, when I checked in at 2:30 at Des Moines, the automated ticket machine said "oh, by the way, Air Traffic Control said the second leg of your flight might be delayed. And we're just letting you know ahead of time, just in case." (i.e. "buy another book, you're not getting home on time")

So here are a few things I learned over the course of five and a half hours in O'Hare.

1. There's a dinosaur in the B (or C) terminal. (It's a little hard to pick out, so I circled it in pink)
The dinosaurs became extinct, not because of some great environmental disaster, but because the only food available to them was served in Terminal B (or C) after ten p.m. Sad but true, they died of starvation.

2. Not bringing your cellphone charger on your trip makes you really, REALLY aware of the quality of the cellphone conversation you're having. "Is this really how I want to spend my battery this weekend? Could I be talking to someone better? Will I need this so I can find my sister later....?" The short answer is no. ANY conversation will pass the time nicely, but I happen to have had some good ones, so I guess I'm just lucky. Sort of.

3. O'Hare toilets are retarded. They're all automatic, with sensor flushes and Sani-seats (those rotating plastic seat covers). I walked into the stall and the seat changed, and the toilet flushed. I jostled my bags into position by the door, and the seat changed, and the toilet flushed. I did my business and got up to leave, and the seat changed again. I opened the door, and left the stall, and the seat changed again. But the toilet never flushed. I went through something like sixteen sani-seats, and still ended up touching the toilet to flush it.

(for those who can't fathom the joy of the sani-seat, go here -- I tried to load the video myself, but it didn't work)

4. Getting stuck in the airport is bad. Getting stuck on the plane is worse, for a number of reasons:

• i) they don't like to circulate the air. (I mean, why waste free air?)


• ii) if the plane pushes back from the gate when it was told to, that flight is considered an on-time departure, despite parking for 35 minutes at the end of the runway.


• iii) you feel kind of like you're being punished. (I originally said "grounded" but you are actually being grounded, and I didn't want to be too punny. Because after 5 hours in O'Hare, THAT'S NOT FUNNY)


• iv) when the woman behind you is blowing her nose about nineteen times into the same tissue, it gets really REALLY old. After a while I started feeling the booger germs pile up on the back of my elbow -- especially since they weren't being ciruculated by the free air.

5. The tunnel from Terminal B to Terminal C (and back to Terminal B and back to Terminal C and back to Terminal B and back to Terminal C, ad infinitum) is rather cool, but would be considerably cooler if a) I had been stoned and b) I had chosen to be there.

6. McDonald's food starts to smell like poop after about forty five minutes. Everyone at my gate was taking turns eating it, and, for the first fifteen minutes, my mouth watered. (oh, by the way, this is on the way back, not on the way there, when I was STARVING, and all bets would have been off) The next fifteen minutes, my tummy rumbled. The next fifteen, I got kind of sick of it, and walked away. (probably to use a retarded toilet) After that, it just smelled gross. And not just too-greasy-too-oily gross, but yech-rotten-nasty-putrid-ass-funk-of-death gross.