Tuesday, April 8, 2008

unexpected behaviour

Today i was supposed to fly back home. luckily i did that. when we first planned driving to the airport, which was about 200km from thomas's home, we thought that 6 o'clock would be just fine to start the journey. my flight was going 8:55 and we thought that 2 hours of driving is absolutely normal in the autobahn's. in the evening we moved it to 5:45, so we had to get up like 5:15.
everything went fine till i got out of the shower, got dressed and looked outside. then i realized that we are in a hurry actually. it was snowing. the ground wasn't covered with snow yet, but it was about to come that close because the snowflakes were pretty thick.
well, we didn't panic, yet. once we got the highway, and after about 20 minutes of driving 90km/h (too slow) i got into panic. because we were about to get slower and slower every minute. not because of the weather but because of the other cars and there were a lot of them. we didn't think, and i'd rather say that Thomas was surprised more than me, to see so many cars that early. we thought that they might have heard something about the upcoming snow and they started going to work earlier knowing it would take them longer than usually. but we didn't know that. and once we got further and saw more snow the cars slowed down even more. and then i started to think how the hell am i going to get back most quickly and not spending much extra money.
but we got a little bit loose when we took a 10km longer way to the airport but which turned out to be pretty free of cars, so we could drive really fast and make up the lost time. but eventually this "shortcut" ended and we found ourselves again in a road full of cars. at some point it cleared that much we could drive faster and now we were heading to the airport in 150. boy was i relieved. the gps system showed the arriving time 8:10 and we were sure that i can still make it in time we planned. and there was no snow at all.
but we made a mistake trusting everything but ourselves. when it was 20km to go we started to see some snow on ground, the road was still good. but you see, the problem was that the airport is up in the higher land and every stupid child knows that if it's up, it's colder. and we expected some more snow. the more we drove the more roads became covered with snow and at some point with ice.
now it's the time that i have to say that german people (thomas i'm sorry, you almost do not qualify) cannot drive in winter. well, they don't have winter like we have, roads full of snow and ice all the time. and they don't have tyres with nails made especially for icy roads. but still, it was like a disaster there. 3 cars ahead of us one car almost crashed just because it was driving with summer slicks.
anyway. at some point we were back of a small bus and going nowhere. we were moving like 500m in half an hour. while we had some time i didn't panic right away. i thought that when we have come that far we can't fail anymore. but i was getting wrong thinking like that. i thought that if thomas will not start to drive past that bus we will be stuck here forever. luckily he did that. and to our surprise there was one big truck going in ahead of that bus which was struggling to get up the hill. i was furious. really furious. because we lost so much time just because not seeing this and being stupid. ouh, did i mention that i had a horrible need to pee but i couldn't go out because i thought that anytime we will start moving again. and i was almost crying inside.
and then after some time passing some other stopped cars and not stopped porsche 's we finally made to see the airport. it was 500m and there was our final obstacle - huge bus standing in the middle of the road, no one letting the cars ahead to pass it and nowhere to go either. for once i thought i'd take my bag and start running because this seemed to go faster than waiting there. but the forces of peoples nature got it's power over some drivers dick and coming cars started to let us pass the bus, including us. and then i started running to the gate. the people working at the gate were already waiting for me and after getting the permission to go to the plane i had one more battle (besides the thing that i still needed to pee) - i had to find the right plane out of 5 similar ones in a snow storm. i tried my luck at the first one and i was right about it.
because i was almost late, i could'nt go to pee in the plane, not before we had taken off because at that moment they were tanking and i wasn't allowed to go to bathroom. at some point they finished it but we were still waiting for some passengers and i just couldn't wait anymore. i thought to myself that i'll explode definetely when we gather heights and i insisted that i can take an urgent pee. and i was allowed to do it.
after some hour of waiting we got off, landed at riga, got some more rain and headed to take my car from the parking space. i was hungry but i didn't have any time nor money to stop somewhere so i headed right away to home.
everything was even more tragic because i got some cold few days ago and it's not a very good feeling inside when you fly when you have a cold. but i was doing oke, i thought and once i got some hotdog from a petrol station in estonia i was feeling happy. an hour to drive and boy was i going fast.
and in the end everything went good. luckily.

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