Mika Tan '15 from Singapore
The Megabus from Boston that was cancelled was the second cancellation that I experienced that day – first my flight from New York got cancelled, hence the decision to take Megabus back to Middlebury (New York-Boston-Burlington), but at the Boston stop, they cancelled the Megabus that would bring me home. But I’m really glad my dad got me a credit card, which finally allowed us to rent a car! (We originally only had debit cards, which didn’t allow us to rent cars.) But as with using parents’ credit cards, any transaction has to be declared to them, and that added unnecessary worry for them because I had to explain that we were going to drive (overnight!) back to Middlebury when Megabus had cancelled their bus due to icy and bad road conditions, and still let them think that I was going to make it back alive and well. Oops!
I’ve also heard of other crazy travel misadventures – a friend of mine was driving his car up from New York to Middlebury with a bunch of other students, and since he’s from North Carolina his car didn’t have winter tires. They skidded off the road into a ditch, and had to wait throughout the night for a rescue vehicle to get them out. The rescue vehicle couldn’t get there any sooner because they were also delayed due to bad road conditions! So they huddled and slept in the car, waiting.
Another friend of mine managed to find a company that chartered two vans at $650 each to drive a bunch of students up from New York! Sounds like everyone had some exciting travel stories to tell!
Prestige Shongwe '16 from San Francisco, CA
I was going from San Francisco to Boston on Sunday morning. Everything worked well – I thought my flights would be cancelled. I arrived in Boston at 2:35 p.m. and I had a connecting Greyhound at 11:50 p.m. So I spent the time at South Station and it’s not the warmest place. At 11:50, I’m on the queue, getting ready to board my bus. There’s a girl in front of me, Holly Burke ’15 [see Holly’s account]. She’s flying from Alaska and she’s had a much more gruesome journey than I had. She’s just ready to board this goddam bus, let’s put it that way. Right when we were in queue, they say the bus is cancelled – I say I’m not spending the night here. And we see two other Middkids, Mika Tan ’15 who flew from Singapore and Roy [Wang] ’15 who flew from China. Holly’s the one who takes the commanding role and the whole reason the bus was cancelled was because the road was icy. Holly says, ‘Guys, Alaska has trained me my whole life for this moment to drive on this highway today. And by this point it is 1:30 a.m. We hear that one car just skidded off the road. But the goal was to make it to the first class of J-Term. And essentially, let’s be honest, we were pulling the first all-nighter of J-Term. I’m very thankful that Holly took her time.
Holly Burke '15 from Anchorage, AK
My first flight out of Anchorage was supposed to go through Chicago to Burlington but that of course got cancelled. I spent three hours waiting in line at the United [Airlines] counter to see if they could reschedule but they wouldn’t give me a flight out until Wednesday. Luckily I was able to get the last seat on a flight Saturday night out of Anchorage to Portland and from there I was able to fly to Boston. The plan was to take a Greyhound [bus] from Boston to Burlington on Sunday night and share a ride back to campus but our bus was cancelled due to bad road conditions.
It was at this point that Prestige (who I had only just met standing in line for the Greyhound) recognized Roy and Mika, and the four of us decided to rent a car to get back to school. Mika had a driver’s license but she had never driven on ice before, so we all decided that I would drive; lucky for us, Hertz lets you drive a rental car at age 20. By the time we got back to Logan airport and rented the car it was almost 2:30 in the morning but we drove straight from Boston to White River Junction, Vt. without stopping. That part of the trip was really slow going; they didn’t have anyone plowing the roads overnight so I spent a lot of time driving well under the 45 mph minimum speed on I-89 through New Hampshire. We didn’t want to end up like the many cars we saw in roadside ditches that night.
We finally made it to Burlington around 8:00 a.m. and were able to return the rental car and share a taxi back to Middlebury. Even though it was a totally exhausting and definitely my most frustrating trip back to school, we almost made up for it in quality time, including some pretty excellent radio sing-a-longs, with people I otherwise might have never gotten to know. Plus, I made it back in time for my class on Monday.
Caroline Walters ’16.5 and I were traveling from Jamaica to Burlington on Saturday, January 4. We got to the Montego Bay, Jamaica airport to find that our flight was delayed 4 hours. We waited in security for two hours, and were then told at the gate that our 4 p.m. flight was delayed until 10 p.m. The gate agents then updated us that the customs at the Philly airport (our connection) was closed, but that we would still be able to get in via special permission. Before we boarded the plane, we were told our flight attendant got sick and that the flight was canceled. US Airways put us up in a hotel, and we got up 3 hours later to come back to the airport where our flight was delayed an hour. We got on the plane finally, and made it to Philly. Now it was Sunday. Unfortunately, all flights out of Philly were cancelled. We decided to get crafty so we took a train to the train station where we got on a Bolt Bus to NYC. We booked Jet Blue flights out of NYC to Burlington for that night. Once we got to JFK, flights were being cancelled on the loudspeaker by the minute. We were told that our flight was delayed an hour, then two hours, and then four hours. Finally at 3 in the morning, we were told it was cancelled. Jet Blue refused to give us hotel rooms or meal vouchers, and all hotel airports and hotels in the surrounding airport were closed. We got a hotel in Manhattan, where I shared a full-size bed with two of my friends. We woke up in the morning, and instead of dealing with JFK again, took a train to Bedford, NY and met our friend Ellie Lovering ’16. Ellie drove us 5 hours to Midd, where we arrived Monday night. In all, it took us 56 hours from Jamaica, when it was supposed to take 7 hours. We were awake for 52 of those hours.
Jessica Cheung '15 from San Francisco, CA
After a red-eye flight from San Francisco Airport, we were sitting on a plane in the Philly airport about to take off for Burlington. The plane even drove off from the gate, and then it stopped. The plane stopped and we sat for three hours before the captain announced the plane would not be taking off due to mechanical issues. There we were: eight Middkids stranded in the Philly airport in the eye of constant chaos. “Next flight out to Burlington will be on Wednesday, three days from now,” the customer service lady said. I, with my friend, booked a 10-hour Amtrak ride that would leave for Burlington the next day. So, we spent this day — the day we were stuck in Philly — in a customer service line for 4 hours, with much optimism that the airline would compensate us with hotel vouchers.
But no dice. After standing in a painfully long line with over 200 people ahead of us, our flight was registered as cancelled due to “weather.” Weather? Our plane was not towed off the tarmac due to the “weather.” It was indeed a mechanical failure but U.S. Airways didn’t want to admit in order to avoid giving out hotel vouchers. So, we stayed in Philly that night and hopped on the Amtrak the next day, grabbing seats that we later realized faced the bathroom. There, I witnessed a whole new kind of privilege outside the Middlebury bubble, where real living adults, despite reading three signs taped inside and on the bathroom door that said ‘close the bathroom door after use,’ left the door wide open after use. Finally, after 10 hours on Amtrak, I was graced by a 60 degree temperature drop from San Francisco. Freezing meant I was closer to school. I was close, but not quite there when we realized: retrieving our baggage from the Burlington airport luggage lot will be an entirely new epic.
Ali Lewis '14 from Chicago, IL
I was meant to fly to Middlebury on Sunday morning, but my flight from Chicago to Burlington was cancelled and rescheduled for Thursday. I (of course) couldn’t get through to United [Airlines] by calling and spent a total of seven hours on hold, but ultimately was able to get a flight to Chicago on Wednesday evening (it was 1°F there!) and then to Middlebury on Thursday morning. The last challenge at the end of it all was that my car battery died because of the cold over break, so my friend couldn’t use it to pick me up from the airport, but I was luckily able to get a MiddTransit ride back.
