Oh, Shhhhuttle!

I live very close to my local airport, so instead of paying an absurd amount of money for parking when I travel, I jog from my house to the long-term parking lot, a twenty-minute jog, and then take a shuttle from there into the airport.

On my most recent trip, however, I arrived at the long-term parking lot and discovered that the airport had recently closed the lot due to the health crisis, meaning there was no shuttle to catch to the terminal. It was another thirty-minute walk at least from there to the nearest open lot with shuttle service.

Worse still, I had already been gambling, since I knew rain was expected later that day; about ten minutes into my extended walk, a torrential downpour started. The rain was so hard it actually hurt to walk into the rain and slowed my pace even more. Meanwhile, I was worn out from the first twenty minutes of jogging, and my backpack, stuffed full as my only piece of luggage, was really starting to weigh me down. Despite leaving plenty of “wiggle room” in my plans, I was starting to worry that I was going to be cutting it close to catch my flight.

Fifteen minutes out from the lot I was headed to, I noticed a shuttle leaving the employee parking lot. I know they are not supposed to pick up non-employees — there are even signs on the bus saying so — but I decided it was worth a gamble. I stood at the corner of the turn that they had to take and made a praying gesture, looking sad, wet, and miserable.

Thankfully, the bus driver took pity on me; he broke the rules and stopped to let me get on the bus. I arrived soaking wet at the terminal shortly after, and thanks to his saving me the time it would have taken to walk to the other lot and catch a shuttle from there, I had enough time to make a pitstop at the restroom and change out of my soaking clothes and into some clothes my backpack did a shockingly good job of keeping dry. A local shopkeeper was even nice enough to give me some plastic bags to stash the wet clothes in so I could put them away without getting the rest of my clothes wet.

I caught my flight out and had a wonderful visit and babysitting session with my goddaughters. Thank you to the bus driver for bending the rules for me! I’ll try to plan better in the future!