I was on my way back home from a customer visit. Linda was traveling to her cousin’s wedding. She had a window seat, I was on the aisle and (fortunately) no one sat in the middle. Linda had brought a book to read along the way. I don’t think she ever opened it.
I don’t recall what kindled the coversation, but we starting talking before they closed the door. Shortly after they did close the door, the captain came made an announcement letting us know that there was a mechanical issue and we’d have to disembark.
When we left the plane we went in different directions, but an hour or so later after reboarding we resumed our discussion, which was non-stop until we landed in Boston.
As we were leaving the aircraft Linda said, “I don’t normally do this, but if I have you my email address would you write?. I said I would and again we went our separate ways.
We exchanged emails on a regular basis. A few times Linda suggested that perhaps I could “stop by”. The problem was that the city where she lived (Oshkosh, WI) wasn’t really a convenient stopover point. Said another way, it wasn’t just like I could show up and say that I happened to be in the neightborhood and … .
In any event, after 2 years of email exchanges we arranged to have our first date.
I had book an Friday evening flight from Boston to Appleton WI (with a stopover in Chicago).
Well, the flight was delayed and bu the time we eventually made it to Chicago, the last flight to Appleton had already departed.
So, I spent the night in Chicago (accomodation provided by United Airlines). I took a cab from O’Hare to the hotel. As I was getting out of the car, I (apparently) dropped my cellphone and then proceeded to attempt to close the car door on it. That resulted in me having an inoperable phone. Once I got to my room, I used the room phone to call to attempt to rebook my flight. I was informed that the earliest available flight was Sunday (which happened to be the day I had thought I’d be returning). Several phone calls later I managed to arrange a rental car to get me from Chicago to Oshkosh and back again. The round trip via car was necessary because apparently Oshkosh is sufficiently out of the way so that one way car rentals are not an option.
Now that I knew I’d be able to get to Oshkosh for our date, I could turn my attentions to resurrecting my cellphone (which contained Linda’s contact info).
Fortunatelym it turned out that the battery had become unseated, so disassembling and reassembly the phone returned it to working order.
Now I could finally get some rest.
The next day I made the 3 hour drive to Oshkosh and we had our first date. I left the following day after being in town less than 24 hours.
I returned the next weekend.
We were married nine months ago. My wedding band has the engraving “Bob and Linda — United 7/16/11″.
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