When life hands you lemons....

...find someone to share the lemonade with.

Or smoothies in this particular case.

My 4th of July vacation didn't start out particularly smooth. Many people have already heard bits and pieces of this story, but for those of you that haven't, here you go:

My plan was to take the red-eye flight Friday night to get into Indianapolis around 9 a.m. the next morning. Well, I usually have pretty damn good luck when it comes to traveling...not so much on this occasion. First off, my initial flight was delayed by 45 minutes because the flight that was due to take off from the gate before mine had a mechanical issue, so they moved that flight onto the plane that my flight was supposed to be using.

So, we all waited for the next plane to come in. I wasn't currently worried about the delay since I was scheduled to have a two-hour layover in Chicago anyway.

Eventually, everyone boards the plane. I make a little small-talk with the guy sitting next to me, with full intentions of quickly ignoring him...immediately reading, listening to music, and hopefully passing out in the near future.

Everything was going according to plan:

Take-off: check
Book: check
iPod: check
Neck pillow: check

We are in the air for half an hour, and had just nearly got into our nice cruising altitude, when a flight attendant calls over the intercom, "If anyone on board is a doctor, nurse, or paramedic, please ring your call button." No call buttons ring. Uh oh.

I immediately look at my neighbor guy inquisitively, then we collectively all start looking around to see what is happening. Nothing too urgent, apparently...all seems calm as far as we can see.

No more than two or three minutes later, we receive another call over the intercom, "If anyone on board speaks Mandarin, please let a flight attendant know."

That's right...not only was the sick passenger pretty damn sick, he didn't quite speak enough English to convey anything to the crew except how much pain he was actually in. OUCH.

While there didn't appear to be any doctors or nurses on board, there were two or three people that spoke Chinese.

Amidst these announcement, neighbor guy and I start rolling our eyes and subsequently making extremely inappropriate jokes. Hey....what can I say....we didn't wish anything bad for the man in pain, we were just ready to get where we were headed! Which, as I found out, was the exact same place.

Neighbor guy turned out to be a Navy boy who is stationed on the base in Bremerton, but is originally from Indianapolis. He appeared to be just as much of a smartass as myself, so we continued chatting it up while the crew was still assessing the medical situation.

Not too long after the last announcement, our pilot's voice rings out overhead spouting off the exact words that we don't want to hear, "Well, everyone, due to a medical emergency, we are going to have to turn around and head back to Seattle."

BURN. So much for making that connecting flight in Chicago.

Oh, and I forgot to mention (not sure how I could forget this) that all the while that these things were happening....a toddler decided it would be a good idea to SCREAM it's head off for about an hour straight a few rows behind us. I thought to myself, "Shit, it's got to get better than this."

We land BACK in Seattle, the paramedics unload the sick man, plane gets refueled/rechecked, and off we go again. More small talk ensues between me and Navy boy and we conclude that since we're both stuck in the same boat and will probably be booked on the same flight to Indy, we might as well hang out when we get to Chicago, have breakfast, and continue chatting to pass the time.

And so it was by this means that we became fast friends over smoothies in Chicago. It just goes to show you that you just have to look on the bright side. And you can always use more friends, in my opinion.

But, back to the trip. I finally made it to Indianapolis. My new friend and I parted ways, numbers exchanged, with the assurance of keeping in touch (and we have, which is cool!). On to pick up my bag. Just when I thought things couldn't get worse...it turns out that my bag arrived ahead of me, which normally wouldn't be a problem...EXCEPT that the "bag lady" decided to take lunch and locked my bag in her office. SHIT.

About 20 minutes later, I finally hopped in the car and headed another hour and 15 minutes to my parents'. So, it was a mini roller coaster ride to make it home to Indiana, but I did finally make it!

Song of the day: "Standing Outside A Broken Phone Booth With Money In My Hand" Primitive Radio Gods (blast from the past, baby!)