Birmingham Good, Mid-Atlantic Bad

For the few days I was in DC, I dismissed the coming storm as the weathermen's empty threat, but on Friday evening I decided this thing was the real deal. Since all the flights to Birmingham from DC were >$1300, I booked it to the last Chinatown bus of the night to Philly. Apparently I wasn't the only one thinking this, so the scheduled 2-hour ride took 4, but I made it in time to get a couple hours of sleep and then to the Philly airport in the morning.

My 11:45 AM flight to Charlotte hadn't been cancelled yet, but I didn't want to risk it so I got on the standby list for an earlier flight. I was the 4th person on the standby list, and 5 made it on the flight. Right after I boarded, Orbitz sent me a message that my other flight was cancelled. Whew, but we still had to get off the ground to be in the clear. After waiting for 2.5 hours for the plane to be de-iced, the plane finally skipped out of Philly and into the warmer climes of Charlotte.

Here's some pics I took while we were waiting for the de-icers. The de-icers are worthy of a Discovery Channel special on cool machinery... they're kind of like a combo Star Wars/super car wash looking contraption. Really cool. There were seven de-icers working simultaneously... quite an operation.