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Atlanta. Hurricane Rita came through the South and I was stuck. Stuck in Atlanta. Aside from a few weeks spent in Minneapolis with a boyfriend, I had never been away from my family. Sure, I lived in Boise, the only thing resembling a real city in all of Idaho, but I grew up, and my family still lived, on twenty acres a few miles from the Snake River.
My flight to Atlanta left Boise at the ungodly hour of 5:30 a.m. (or at least I thought it was ungodly then. Now things have certainly changed!). Because of the early hour, or so I thought, my throat was scratchy. Once in Atlanta, I was supposed to board a connecting flight to Baton Rouge, where I would volunteer for the Red Cross. By the time I reached Atlanta, Rita had already started assailing the Gulf Coast. All flights were canceled. What the hell was I supposed to do? Sure most people had flown by themselves numerous times by the time they were twenty six, and I am sure that most were more worldly than I, but bottom line, I didn’t know what the hell I was going to do.
Armed with a paper itinerary, a host of phone numbers for the Red Cross, and enough crap in my backpack to sustain myself on a three week Survivor Man style stint, I had to figure out what to do. My first stop was the United information desk. The only thing they had to tell me was that I would be reassigned to another flight, but that it would probably not leave until the day after next.
So I looked at my list of Red Cross phone numbers to call, and picked the volunteer helpline for the DR865, the Disaster Relief Operation, headquartered in Baton Rouge. I was greeted with a recording. I would learn later, that this recording was updated in the beginning every few hours, and near the end, every few days, and supplied volunteers with information such as where to go at the airport to make sure that someone would pick you up and bring you to the headquarters, and weather information for the site. I don’t remember exactly what the recording said, but I am pretty sure that it said something like, “There is a hurricane currently pounding us. That is why there is not a live person answering the phone. You were crazy to think this was a good idea.”
My sinuses were killing me, and my throat hadn’t lost the scratchy feeling. I called my mom. I told her what was happening, and she told me I could come home. I did not want to do that. I may have been scared, but this was the first time I had ever done anything on my own (well sort of) and I certainly didn’t want to fail. Plus, why would I want to come home and be bored again? She asked me how much money I had. I had just about three hundred dollars in my checking account (thanks unemployment!), and absolutely no credit; something else I had messed up in my foray into adulthood. My mom offered to put a night’s stay at a hotel on her credit card. The lady at the United desk told me about a hotel a few miles away, where most of the other stranded passengers had already booked rooms. And the shuttle went there. I was sold.
My next stop was retrieving my luggage, which somehow, was next in line for a flight to Baton Rouge, or at least being stowed until I was finally able to arrange a flight.; I forget which. Anyway, it was quite an ordeal to get my luggage out of custody, since it clearly said right on the tag that it was destined for Baton Rouge.
Luggage in hand, all seventy five pounds of it or so, and all in a backpack so that I could carry it, I traveled on the super fast shuttle train that runs beneath the airport to catch my ground transportation to the hotel. By this point, I was feeling miserable.
Finally, I checked into a sad looking Drury Inn, somewhere in the outskirts of Atlanta (to the South, maybe?); to this day, I really have no idea where it was.
There was a Waffle House in the parking lot! This was the South. I had never seen such a place in person, and half of me didn’t really believe that they were an actual chain of restaurants. It absolutely reeked of every stereotype I had ever heard about the South.
Once I was checked in to my modest room, I called my grandma and my mom to assure them that I was safe in a hotel room in Atlanta. Both were unsure of this. Neither of them had been to Atlanta, and I was very naïve, and getting sick on top of that. After I hung up the phone, I cleverly hid the most precious of my belongings, which on this trip included a light that I could strap to my head, and several bags of batteries; both of which were listed as important take alongs by my Red Cross packing guide, (mind you, both the batteries and the strap on light were still in their plastic bags two years later when I came across them in a move; important, indeed.) and set out for a convenience store a few blocks away, to find something to make myself feel better.
Holy shit! was all I could think when I walked in the door; the clerk was actually behind glass, bulletproof I am sure, and you had to pass your money to him through a slot at the bottom. Crazy! This was just like I had seen on TV. I had never been in a place where I had to talk to the clerk through the glass before. It felt so clinical. It felt like they were simply waiting for something to go horribly wrong. So, so naive was I. I found a generic variant of Dayquil, made my purchase, and headed back to the hotel.
Dayquil normally hops me up like nobody’s business, but this time, I took a couple of pills, and woke up fourteen hours later. I was so sick. My head had never hurt so badly. My throat was swollen shut, and I hurt everywhere. It was the good old fashioned flu! I had completely missed Rita, or the coverage of her on the news anyway.
