24 hour delay

08.14.2003

Andy postponed his Puerto Rico holiday a day.

We were driving on I-94 towards Chicago O'Hare. I'd just put in Portishead in the CD player. We were tired, and Andy drove w/ the moon roof open. We almost missed the little "pop krackle" sound. Probably just the radio, eh? Weird.

And then the hood flew up towards our face, smashing the windshield at 80 miles an hour. The glass spidered, and gave, but didn't break. But now we were driving blind, barreling down the interstate. I'm just glad Andy stayed calm and managed to pull off the highway on the next exit.

We were in downtown Chicago. Andy's flight was in three hours.

We put the hood down, and drove (very slowly) to a nearby gas station. They didn't have a phonebook. And it was 3am Chicago time. We quickly ran down our list of options.

Andy had a friend in Chicago. The phone rang, and we got our first break. He was still awake, and just driving home. He swung by to escort us to his apartment.

In the end, Andy managed to cancel his flight, receiving a credit from Spirit Airlines. I got dropped off at Union Station, and took a train back to Kalamazoo. I was pleasantly surprised that going by train (which is faster) cost half as much as going by bus. So I got back to Kalamazoo, tired and frazzled, just in time to catch the tail end of Caleb & Marci's going away breakfast.

I just got off the phone w/ Andy about an hour ago. He got lucky. His insurance will cover the cost of the repair (estimated at $3,000) for a small $100 deductible. So he's still flying to Puerto Rico, just a day later.

Andy & I joked about the lessons we should learn from this event. Here's my list:

  1. Always bring a credit card
  2. Only buy cars w/ hoods that open away from the windshield, not towards it

Posted by Miguel at 03:36 PM

Comments

I talked to Andy this afternoon. That is crazy! Glad he can still got to Puerto Rico. That must have been a crazy feeling on the highway.

Posted by: sam at August 14, 2003 06:42 PM

For future reference, you can put me on your emergency call list for Chicago based cricies. I haven't used my super woman cape very much latley, so it would be good to get the dust off.

Posted by: vanessa at August 15, 2003 10:01 AM