Well, as mentioned a few weeks ago – I was in Washington DC at a conference last week. It was a fabulous event, ripe with opportunities of all sorts. A big part of the messages we received from the leaders was:
Look and reach for opportunities as they will tend to lead to more opportunity.
I had lots of time to recap the event and the teachings during my flight back home to Nova Scotia (or rather my experience of a flight home). I will be sharing lots during the coming weeks on the blog here but for now my story is all about my homecoming!
Things didn’t start off in the best way for me and many others – the snow in the mid West was wreaking havoc on all the plane schedules. My Sunday night flight home was delayed enough that I would miss the connecting flight in New York and there were no other ones that night. Soooo… the Delta agent gave me a hotel voucher, had my luggage brought back and off I went to the hotel – a very nice Hyatt near the Dulles Airport. I had a good meal, (had a cry when my daughter started crying because I would not be home as promised) slept a bit and got up at 4am to catch my new flight… and here the journey to opportunity begins.
When I woke up I checked online and all was good. By the time I hit the front desk for my taxi – the flight was delayed 2 hours – but this was okay I had lots of time in between flights. I explored the JFK airport and visited the duty free shop and was doing fine, until the departure board started showing another delay. UGH! Mechanical issues meant another 45 min delay.
We were not the only ones and the gates were total confusion with people being moved from one gate to another and sometimes 2 or 3 loading at once. Still, nothing I could not handle. Most things can be seen as an opportunity : a possibility due to a favorable combination of circumstances – though I will debate what favorable is!!
We finally boarded the plane about 1 and 1/2 hours later, all was fine until the Captain started with the messages – “We are waiting for the baggage to load”, “We are waiting for our paperwork to go through”, “We are waiting our turn in line to take off”. By the time we took off a few hours later I had met a fine fellow next to me, Mike, and as chance had it we went to the same high school in Nova Scotia twenty some odd years ago.
I always get chatty in these situations (poor Mike 
) and love to play the “Six Degrees of Separation” game to see if the person I have just met has something or knows someone in common (I think it is a trait of having moved more than 27 times and met many people PLUS I am good at this game! I have had many of these types of experiences all my life). The conversations we had made for a fabulous plane ride (Well, there was the one time the plane hit a bit of turbulence and everyone was rattled from the sudden bumps, enough that I may have yelled out loud!) until the Captain started talking again – “There is a lot of wind in Halifax and we will not be able to land. Instead we will be diverting to Bangor Maine, where they will get you a bus to a hotel until we can get you on to your destination in Halifax when the wind stops.”
… and so the fun begins with the opportunities that arose from a very delayed plane ride that never did get me home.
(Stay tuned this week to hear more about my trip home – it was quite an adventure! and involves one of the best taxi rides ever!!)
Yesterday on 
