Shadows and Fog

Living in San Francisco for substantial portions of the last three months, I have spent more time in fog in that time than in the last three years combined. The hilltop home that I have called home thanks to the incredible generosity of my sister- and brother-in-law manages is either in fog or above it more than just about any other part of San Francisco. It is the fun, thick kind, too. On one occasion I missed a turn because an opposing car's headlights turned my view into an opaque white wall.

This week, it turned out that getting out of The City didn't get me away from the fog. Burbank experienced an unusual spate of ground fog this past weekend. As it turns out, my Friday night flight was lucky to land. We could see the fog hugging the ground, but it lifted sufficiently above the deck to allow the airplane to touch down. Sunday night was a different story; the fog shut the airport down. Unfortunately, that meant that there were no airplanes staged to take Monday morning's departing passengers, including me. So when the fog remained, closing the airport until the fog dissipated around 9 am, nobody went anywhere because there were no airplanes there to do the work. Worse, the aircraft were not released from their points of departure to get to Burbank until the fog was gone, so we had to wait at least an hour for any of the airplanes to show up. The first Southwest airplane in came empty from Las Vegas, and then planes started arriving in bunches, stacking up on the small airfield.

My 7 am flight was cancelled, but I rebooked on a 9 am flight while I stood in line with 200 other bewildered passengers at the Southwest checkin desk. After rebooking, I jumped out of line and picked up my new boarding pass at the electronic kiosk. I love living in this era.

Of course, my new flight was delayed, too. We finally boarded our airplane at 11:20, but it did not take off until noon. I finally got to the office by 1:45, after having arisen at 5:30 that morning, expecting to be in the office at 9 as usual on Mondays.

I was impressed that just about everyone kept their cool. The problem was as obvious as looking out the window: the fog was impenetrable, except to confirm that there were no airplanes to take us anywhere anyway. Everybody accepted their lot that day, and dutifully boarded their adjusted flights whenever the planes could jockey into position. There is hope for humanity yet.