17.15

18.41

19.06

19.30

20.15

21.00

21.45

22.00

23.00

22.45

Am I getting mad? Well, it is possible indeed, but in this case these figures do have a sense: they are the departure times of my flight from Washington to San Francisco as progressively communicated by United (I have the proof on my email account!)

Last Friday, in fact, a huge storm suddenly broke out precisely when I was approaching the airport. “Fortunately it all began when I was just a few kilometers away from the airport, I was lucky!” I naively thought. Upon my arrival, I discovered that my flight, originally scheduled for 17.15, had been postponed to 18.41. Quite annoying, but nothing terrible, after all.

When I reached the gate, however, the horrible sequence started. We discovered – or at least, thus we were communicated – that due to the thunderstorm, our plane coming from SF had had to land in Richmond (the capital of Virginia, not far from Washington, not the town next to Berkeley 🙂 ). Considering that the same thing had occurred to many other planes, a huge mess had been taking place, with a series of delays affecting all the flights scheduled for that time segment. Ironically, the storm had a very short duration, so the following flights did not experience any problem, and it was quite unpleasant to see that the 19.39, 19.59, and 22.05 planes progressively took off, while my flight was surrounded by uncertainty.

In the meantime, my mind went to when I had asked the travel agency to book the flight for me. I had initially requested the 16.30 flight, but due to a hitch, it had not been possible to make the reservation immediately. The following day the price had grown by 300 €. Not 10 or 20: 300! Never mind, there was the 17.15 flight, whose price was equal to the 16.30 initial one: those 45 additional minutes would not change much, right?? Yes, indeed… (By the way, the 16.30 could take off at 18.00).

However, we finally managed to depart at 22.45, and actually the final change in the departure time, with the 15-minute advance, was about to make me lose my flight! It would have been absurd! Naturally when I finally reached my motel in Berkeley, at 2.30 (i.e. 5.30 in Washington), I was not exactly the most relaxed person in the world.

Actually all these problems with my flight had not been the worst thing of the day, though. My fantastic Friday, in fact, had begun with very bad news: the girl who was supposed to sublet me a room in her apartment and with whom I had had an agreement for a month, had decided to withdraw from the agreement, something like ten hours before signing the contract. I do not enter into details, obviously, fact is that I was in a very complicated situation. I had already planned to book a motel room for that night, since “my” bedroom in the apartment did not have a bed, which I would buy the following day – which answers the question “Why a motel?” that you have probably asked while reading the previous lines – but I had to find a solution for the following days.

Before leaving from the conference venue, I had sent an email to UC Berkeley’s International House – which is the residence for international students and scholars, predictably – asking about the availability of a room for the rest of the summer, i.e. until August 12. It is well known that the International House is very expensive – and it is even worse in summer, as I could experience – but it seemed to me a sensible solution in the emergency situation. I had immediately been replied that I was lucky (!) and that a room was indeed available, therefore I could / had to proceed with the online application, which is quite complicated considering that one has to send a number of documents and so on. Partly because it would have been really complicated to do everything at the airport and partly because I did want to think about the really high price, I completed the procedure only the following morning. But obviously these things happen on Friday afternoon, so the following day was Saturday, and I suspected that the administrative process could be completed only on Monday morning. That is what indeed happened, so my prospects were to spend – at least – two additional nights in the motel…