Dr. A on the road: Day 4

I just arrived home a couple of hours ago. It's taken a while unpacking and getting ready for work on Friday. And, how it's time to tell you what happened on Thursday - and what a day! We had our final site visit, which I found very valuable. I'm still processing the information that I have learned.

The exciting part of the day happened after that. When we got to the Cincinnati airport, we saw that our flight was on time. Our final destination is our home airport of Pittsburgh, but to get there we had to fly west to Chicago and then east to Pittsburgh. In the early afternoon, we started hearing reports that Chicago was getting hit with a snowstorm.

Right when our team got to the gate, we learned that our flight into Chicago was going to be delayed. I started getting stressed out at that point. I was starting to think that even if we got to Chicago, would we be able to get out of there and back home? Or, would our flight out of Chicago be delayed, or even cancelled.

After discussion, the team decided to ditch the flights, rent a car, and drive the 300 miles home. The entire time, we were trying to get weather reports wondering if the snowstorm was going to hit Ohio while we were on the road. We did manage to get home safely, but, I have to tell you. The past 10-12 hours has been very stressful, and I have to go to bed, because I have to go back to work tomorrow. Yeesh!

While we were on the road, we received word that the flight we were supposed to take from Cincinnati to Chicago was indeed delayed. When the flight left the gate, it went all the way out to the runway, but then was held there for about an hour. After that, the plane came back to the gate and the flight was subsequently cancelled. If we decided to stay at the airport, our flight would have been cancelled, and we would still be in Cincinnati right now.

Also, as I was scanning the news just when I got home, I see that there is a foot of snow forecast to fall in Chicago through the night. And, more than 600 flights were cancelled out of O'hare today. Of course, in hindsight, I'm glad the team decided to ditch the flights and drive home. But, at the time we were discussing, I wasn't sure what the right decision would be.