6.23.2010

Fri-Jun-18-Tornado



Lucija was one of the housemates in the House Of Ten. She is getting married tomorrow at 11h00am in Omaha, Nebraska, which, according to Wikipedia, is located in the Midwestern United States on the Missouri River, about 20 miles (30 km) north of the mouth of the Platte River. Vivi, Jordan, Matteo, Nick, Caroline, Lesley, Wolf, Adam and Jessamy are going to be there. I already have a beautiful summer dress and a lovely hat – the perfect outfit. I am leaving Raleigh at around 6pm, meeting Adam in Chicago at around 8pm and then flying to Omaha where Brendan and Matteo are going to be waiting for us at a bar! We have already made reservations at the hotel and I’ve just checked the weather, it couldn’t be better. Well, it could only be better, if there weren’t a tornado in Chicago.

Because then I wouldn’t have to wait three hours at the airport without knowing whether or not the connecting flight was also going to be delayed. I wouldn’t have to wait an extra hour sitting on the plane while the woman in front of me told her life story on the phone and the guy to my left yelled out his most interesting life accomplishments. Because then I wouldn’t have to watch a movie about the origin of lighting and thunders and wouldn’t have to wonder if the ones I was seeing outside the plane window would by any chance strike the plane. No, I wouldn’t have to fly around the storm that was devastating Chicago and take a detour to, coincidently, Omaha, Nebraska, since the plane couldn’t land at the O’Hare International Airport. And no, I wouldn’t land in Chicago at 1h00 am on Saturday to find out that the next available flight to Omaha was on Tuesday.


But if there were no tornado, then I wouldn’t have had the chance to see Adam tired and cranky, watching Dexter and talking about the Phish concert with a weird friend that he had just met at the airport. And I wouldn’t have had a chance to give him a hug and say goodbye as he closed his eyes and went into sleep mode in a not so comfortable bench at the airport where he decided to stay until 5am and try his luck at the standby list. And I wouldn’t have called Dunia, a friend of mine from Sao Paulo who is getting his MBA at HBS and had just landed in Chicago from a trip to Denver and is one of my guardian angels in this life. And I wouldn’t have found out that Pimenta and Roberta, two of the people I love the most in Sao Paulo but have been living in NY, would be landing in Chicago in the following morning. And if there hadn’t been a tornado, I wouldn’t have had a Stella at the windy patio of Dunia’s new apartment that overlooks the lake.

And the weekend would have been a lot different.



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