Time Bomb

I don’t know about you, but I like to plan my trips and adhere to an itinerary. Especially when it comes to flying. I like discipline. Maybe it’s the upbringing: My dad was a WWII vet and Army colonel who kept a strict regimen.

My wife Diane’s philosophy is much like her upbringing--the parallel opposite. She likes to tell about the day her father came home--this was in Peoria, Ill.--and announced they were driving to New Orleans and would leave in 20 minutes.

Her spontaneity always seems to clash with my organization. But don’t get me wrong. I wouldn’t want to change her for the world--just for the times we travel together. Last October, Diane happened to be along for my Trip From Hell.

It begins innocently enough. It is the last day of a family vacation in Illinois. Our plane home to Los Angeles is scheduled to depart Chicago’s O’Hare Airport at 5:30 p.m. We will drive to the airport, leaving downtown Chicago at 3:30. This allows 45 minutes on the expressway, 25 minutes to return the rental car and 50 minutes to leisurely make our way to the gate with two small children and some carry-on bags. The operative word is “leisurely.”

After lunch, I make the most unintentional, inadvertent, off-the-cuff remark of the trip, which starts the ball rolling backward. I mention that one of the world’s tallest buildings, the Sears Tower, is just a few blocks from here.

“Great!” Diane says. “Let’s go!”

I point to my watch: It reads 2:45.

“We have plenty of time!” she says.

My wife likes to paint me as the guy who doesn’t like to have fun. This is not true (I think).

So down Adams Street we walk with our two children, 5 and 1 1/2, and my friend Dave (who’s from Chicago). Four blocks later, we’re entering the Sears Tower. I check my watch. Hmmm, 3:00. Tick, tick, tick. . . .

We purchase tickets and wait in line for the auditorium doors to open. What I didn’t realize was that visitors to the Sears Tower get to enjoy a short film about the great city of Chicago before being rocketed up 110 stories to the observation deck.

After the film is over and the lights come back on, my watch reads 3:20.

We stand in line for the elevator (four minutes), shoot up 1,454 feet (70 seconds) and then walk around and look out the windows. The view is stunning, but I notice heavy clouds all around. Funny, looks like rain. We’ve been in Illinois a week and it hasn’t rained, but now, when we have to drive 18 miles to the airport to catch a plane that leaves in about two hours, now, it looks like rain.

We wander the observation deck and snap pictures. Jarrod, my 5-year-old, gets barked at by a guard for trying to get too close to the window. We leave and take the elevator down to the street. It’s now 3:45, and we haven’t even gotten to the car yet. Dave hails us a cab. I see raindrops on the windshield.

The cab drops us at Michigan Avenue, and we run half a block to the parking garage, then trudge down three levels to the rental car, which is packed and ready to go.

“We still have plenty of time,” my wife reassures me, although her intonation has changed from no-nonsense nonchalance to unsettling unease.

I swing onto Congressional Parkway, and the windshield wipers go into overdrive. Tick, tick, tick. . . . It is now 4:03.

Now’s the time to put the pedal to the metal, say 70 mph, right? Not so. It’s hard to go anywhere fast on the expressway in a torrential downpour; 25 mph is the limit. To make a long drive short, it takes an hour to get to the airport, and that’s in the carpool lane.

We arrive at 5:05. I dump the family with the skycap and tell Diane that we probably won’t be on the same flight and if one of our flights should go down in a ball of flames, well, it’s been fun.

She nods, and I see her thinking: She must now contend with our brood alone; the Sears Tower probably wasn’t worth the price; but, hey, she got her way. She won.

My car zooms away from the curb toward the rental return area. I probably don’t have enough time to make the flight, but there’s always a little hope, a little luck--and a lot of hydroplaning on the way (it is here, as I fishtail past two cabs and a bus, that I regret not accepting collision insurance).

After dropping off the car, I leap onto the rental bus that will take me back to the airport, lugging a bag and baby Kristen’s car seat (which inexplicably has been weighted down with anvils). The watch reads 5:11.

The bus driver asks for my terminal. I say “3” and “I’m late” (hoping for sympathy and contemplating whether five bucks would make a difference; I deduce it would not). We quickly take off, and luck seems on my side: We get a green light on Mannheim Road, which turns in to the airport. Hey, this might work.

My excitement is quickly quashed as the bus slows. We stop at Terminals 1 and 2 to drop off and pick up more for other passengers. Tick, tick, tick . . . I feel a bomb about to go off inside of me.

At 5:21, the bus comes to a lazy stop in front of Terminal 3. I grab the bag and the baby seat. The race is on.

Up the escalator, I glimpse a departure monitor. My flight is ON TIME, departing from GATE 12A.

I join the short line of people queued up to parade through the metal detector. My bag slung over one shoulder, I hold the baby carrier with the other hand, unaware that I’m poking the guy in front of me, the one wearing a suit and a scowl.

Suddenly he whirls around as if he’s been stabbed by Norman Bates and barks: “Do you mind!”

I say (ever so politely), “Sorry about that.”

His eyes widen. ‘You’ve hit me three times!”

“I said I was sorry . . . friend.”

He shoots one of those “if I weren’t wearing a suit we’d settle this right here” kind of looks and hurries off.

As I continue my dash, I check the watch: 5:24. I look at the nearest gate: I’m nowhere near Gate 12. I grunt and gasp and sprint as fast as humanly possible (that is, for someone who just passed the big Four-O) and all I can think about is that damn Sears Tower. Who needs 110 stories of steel and concrete jutting into the stratosphere anyway?

My mouth is parched and my pace slackens. I drop the anvil baby carrier. BANG! People stop and stare. The nearest gate sign says 8A. My watch says 5:27. I say “ . . . “ (expletive deleted).

I continue the struggle, dodging to the left, angling to the right. Gate 10B comes into view, and there, somewhere beyond, I visualize 12A.

Now on my final approach, I suddenly remember the fine print that’s on every ticket issued by every airline: IF YOU ARRIVE LESS THAN 10 MINUTES BEFORE DEPARTURE, YOUR TICKET IS SUBJECT TO CANCELLATION! The watch reads 5:28. Uh-oh.

Regardless of the consequences, there is no turning back. It’s do or die. Fight to the finish. Yadda, yadda, yadda. Suddenly I see huge letters ahead of me (about the size of Cleveland), which appear to call out like a beacon: 12A!

I stumble up to the gate counter, breathless, bruised, dragging the remnants of the baby seat, my mouth as dry as the Mojave, and I watch the attendant replacing the words “LOS ANGELES” on the signboard with something like “PEORIA.”

“May I help you?” the attendant murmurs.

There isn’t a drop of saliva left to loosen my tongue to speak. All I can do is wave my ticket toward the gate.

“Oh, I’m sorry, sir, you can’t get on this plane.”

I peer through the glass and indeed see a plane. I see it backing away, lifting off, flying my family across half the continent. I see myself sitting here for a long time, waiting for PEORIA to turn back into LOS ANGELES.

The agent has come around her desk, and she is looking at the baby carrier. “Are you with a child?” she asks.

It’s a dumb question, but I nod enthusiastically, pointing again to the plane.

“Oh, your child’s on the plane?”

The nodding continues and my lips utter some obscure dribble that even I cannot understand, to which someone else replies: “Oh, if you’re with that woman and her two children, then go right. . . . “

I charge past her with the same determination that has been driving me since we left the Tower.

The door attendant stops in the process of closing, and I stumble onto the 767, me, my bag and baby carrier, banging and bumping through first and business class, my knees about to buckle from fatigue. And there, sitting in Row 25, are the objects of my affection: the family that I’d travel to the ends of the Earth for--or the end of the airport, which seems farther.

And how do they greet me? Is it “Oh, you poor dear, are you all right?” Is it “Our hero!” No.

It’s “See, we made it after all.”

I collapse into my seat. Diane tosses a 2-ounce nip of bourbon onto my lap. I feel my mood improving. She takes my hand and pats it lovingly. The plane taxis to the runway and we soar into the sunset.

“Hey, Dad, I think I can still see the Sears Tower!” says Jarrod, peering out the window. “It doesn’t look so big from up here. It’s getting smaller.”

I concur.