December 23, 2004

Planes Trains & Automobiles

Hundreds of passengers are stuck at Richmond International Airport, after an airplane edged off a runway Thursday morning and got stuck in the mud.
It is 4 p.m. at Reagan National Airport and the lines of anxious passengers eager to leave Washington are now backed up at the south security checkpoint in a line about 50 people long. Suddenly, there is a small crisis at the checkpoint's lane four.

Federal airline security screener Krista Knieriem had been smoothly moving bags along the conveyor belt as she looked up at a multicolored screen. There had been a delay just moments ago, when she spotted a fork -- a prohibited item -- in someone's carry-on bag; another screener removed it. But now the bags are backed up, and a traveler's sandwich, packed in a plastic takeout box, gets smashed between two bins. Suddenly, tuna salad is tumbling down the belt, as everyone in the vicinity can tell by the odor.

Southern Indiana barely had time to catch its frosty breath after a snowstorm Wednesday morning when a second, heavier gust pummeled the region, shutting down Interstate 64 eastbound from Evansville to the Illinois State line.

"We're still stuck here. It's been about 13 hours," Ken Sabatini, 52, of Leawood, Kan., said Thursday morning. He, his wife and two children were traveling to Cincinnati for Christmas. "It's cold outside and we're doing our best to stay inside the car."

A passenger train traveling through Cincinnati was delayed a couple of hours because of heavy snow, Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari said. Snow gets between the switches that route trains, he said, and must be cleaned out. The train -- the Cardinal -- was "back underway at restricted speed" because of cold weather and winds, which can affect the rail line's traffic control system, he said.

Only having to drive seven miles to celebrate Christmas in the house where I grew up...priceless.

Posted by Nic at December 23, 2004 01:39 PM
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