It had been a mild winter, so far.  Christmas had been warm, there’d been very little snow in the forecast, and while I think I knew better – because February, in the US, is always unpredictable when it comes to snow, I also thought – being in Tulsa – that I was far enough south that flying out wouldn’t matter.  Like it would probably snow a little, but nothing to the extent of affecting the flight.  As long as I didn’t schedule a layover in Chicago it would be fine. 

And up until the week before I was supposed to leave, it looked like it was going to be fine.  But then the forecast pivoted and the Snowmageddon event of the year was beginning to make its way across the US with a projected arrival, in Tulsa, for the very day that my flight was supposed to leave.  With snow – and weather in general in the US – the forecast can quickly go from mild to apocalyptic… and it can just as easily go from extreme to nothing at all – and so it’s often impossible to tell what’s going to happen. 

But something told me not to play with this one… especially since I was going to have to take a Lyft from my apartment complex to the airport which is, on the best of days, about thirty minutes away.  I didn’t want to take the chance that the available Lyft drivers might get snow-shy and that there wouldn’t be enough of them out that day, so I decided to get a room at the Holiday Inn next to the airport so I’d be right there. 

If I timed all this correctly, I’d be safely in Germany by the time the snowstorm made it to Charlotte, having tea with a German.    

So I sped up my timetable by a day, parked my Elder Scrolls Online character in one of her houses, and got a Lyft to my hotel.    

I felt better once I got there… there’s something about being at the launchpoint – even if you’re not going to actually leave for another night – that makes you feel like you’re on the way.  So after I checked in, I sat in front of the fireplace, drinking tea and texting my friends and family to let them know what I’d done. 

It was then that I got the first alert about the storm…. It was coming, it was as bad as they’d said it might be – worse, even – and if it hit the way that they said, at the time they said, there was a good chance my flight would get canceled.  American Airlines, likewise, sent an alert across my phone to alert me of the weather and the possible cancellation, saying that I could change my flight to another time at no charge.   

I sat with it for a few minutes, wondering what to do, scrolling through possible alternative flights and decided, ultimately, that I’d be better off changing it to an earlier takeoff.  There were two possible options – one at 6:00 a.m. with a layover in Dallas, and another at 6:30 with a layover in Charlotte where I’d catch the same connecting flight I was originally scheduled to take – just a longer layover.  I hate the Dallas airport with a passion… it’s big, with really tiny bathrooms scattered across its stretches of terminal, six stalls per person, which means that the lines to use them are insanely long.  I’d spent one layover, flying back from Kentucky, sitting there and I didn’t want to do it again, so I decided to stick with the Charlotte flight. 

Once that was rebooked, I felt easier in my mind about it.  I’d have to get up at the crack of dawn to check in, but if I could get ahead of the, and be on the plane as Tulsa was getting iced over it would be perfect.  

I didn’t sleep much that night though.  I never do before I travel.  There’s always so much anticipation – did I pack everything, did I turn off the lights, did I remember to lock the doors, did I close the garage (I remembered I had closed the garage; and a quick look at my living room Ring camera, confirmed that I had, in fact, locked the doors).  Finally, at around 4 a.m., I couldn’t stand it anymore.  I packed up the few things I’d taken out of the suitcase, checked out of the hotel, and caught the shuttle going to the terminal. 

I think I was the third or fourth person there… and one of those people had clearly spent the night there in the airport, as he was still stretched across the seats in front of baggage dropoff and check-in, jacket across his face.   

And even after I’d checked in my bags, I quickly realized I’d maybe overestimated the amount of time I was going to need.  I was there before TSA.  And my Global Entry/TSA Precheck line was…   well… devoid of people. Only three or four stood in the regular security line.  Okay… note to self, I thought… next time maybe don’t get here so early.  (But on the other hand, how was I supposed to know… and it’s not like I was sleeping in the hotel anyway.) 

Anyway, finally, thirty minutes later, I was through security – and it took thirty minutes only because I needed them to open first – and sitting at my gate, waiting… surfing my phone, texting the German, and looking anxiously out the window as the forecast had pushed the storm’s arrival ahead by an hour and flights were already being cancelled.  Across the terminal from me sat the passengers on their way to Dallas and it was then that I first started to regret not taking that flight.   

They boarded earlier than I did… their flight was to leave thirty minutes before mine, and if you’ve ever tried to outrun a storm of any kind, you know that even a few minutes in the wrong direction can yield dramatically different results.  

Still, my co-passengers also began filling up the seats around mine, and American hadn’t yet cancelled the flight, and as the minutes ticked closer and the gate agent finally stepped behind the podium for the flight to Charlotte, I felt like things were finally going to be okay. 

The flight wasn’t full, but it was crowded, though boarding went smoothly.  I had a window seat – I always book a window seat – and watched little bits of sleet fall from the sky against the gray dawn.,  

A delay, as they de-iced the plane, made my heart jump into my throat… because what if they realized they couldn’t keep it de-iced?  It was awfully, awfully cold out there.  Several degrees below freezing.  And so I sat there anxiously as they moved the de-icer around, under, and over the plane, filming out my window when it finally got to my side, not really breathing, fully, until the pilot taxied away from the gate and began its journey down the runway. 

And then the familiar stop, the quiet – disturbed only by the sounds of the machine as the plane adjusts itself in preparation, and then the mad dash down a dead-end road that ends with a small bump and then… as if like magic, I’m sitting at a diagonal angle as the ground gets smaller and smaller underneath me.  I’m in the air, flying over Tulsa and its deteriorating roads, minutes away from being in the clouds and flying high above all the chaos that’s quickly coating Oklahoma in a freezing blanket of ice.   

I felt like the luckiest girl in the world… I’d outsmarted the storm – the one thing that seemed determined to keep my feet on the ground and anchored in the US.  I was heading to Charlotte where the winter wasn’t supposed to affect the area until sometime the next day.  And by then, I’d be long gone, feet on the ground in Germany, with my German at my side.  Oh, it would still be winter there… and I knew that.  I’d packed for it.  But I also knew I’d be so happy to be there, and with him, that I wouldn’t even notice.