Why?

As I emerge from Chicage O'Hare, temporary cots and stuffed-up travelers playing card games left behind in my wake, I am greeted with a mini snowstorm. Big perfect flakes on my blue knit sweater. I climb on to the Embraer, which seats 48 people (or 30 Americans) and wonder, "Why the hell did I just wait in the airport for 7 and a half hours so that I could go to Ft. Wayne, Indiana?" To make matters worse, I had only been made aware a few moments before that Ft. Wayne is only a 3 hour drive from Chicago. It would have been a brutal and slushy journey, but it would have been movement, complete with big mugs of coffee from Travelmarts on the road.

On the plane I'm seated next to a pilot "deadheading" to Ft. Wayne so that he can fly the plane out the next morning. Blissfully unaware that it's not the plushest of assignments, he listens to his iPod during both takeoff and landing. Apparently when you're a pilot you need not heed safety warnings. I briefly wonder if the on-duty pilots were in the cockpit listening to R. Kelly's Chocolate Factory as they guided us through Indiana's wintry mix. Or perhaps it was The Eagles.

Ft. Wayne is slightly easier to get out of than it is to get into. With only 8 gates in this bustling international airport (Ft. Waynians fly to Canada occasionally), there's little chance of missing the flight and stragglers in the airports lone restaurant, a chili-serving joint frequented only by the people that work there, are reminded over the loudspeaker to take the 2-minute journey through security and up to their gate so that the plane can take off.