not a quiet moment--Part 3

We did make it to the gate on time since the flight to Louisville was delayed again, but we had no luck getting onto the plane. We got some "midnight snack" and my brother slept for a while at around 1am. I was still reading the pharmacy related articles I brought with me. Mom urged me to sleep, but later woke my brother up since she found some "better spot" to sleep near gate F11 (we were near gate F8).

It was a mess there. Trash everywhere. Certainly there were no arm rest on the seats so you can lay down, but I didn't care. I wouldn't mind staying up just for one night, but mom was obessed with getting a "good night sleep" and wouldn't sleep unless I sleep. Then, there came the lady vacuuming nearby and it was almost impossible to fall asleep with that noise going on. I moved to another distant spot so mom wouldn't see me and I could continue to read my articles. I believed the entire clean-up crew worked around the clock and there were constantly people and vehicles moving around. Soon it was around 4:45 am. I went back to see mom and we went to McDonald's for some coffee. I never know that McDonald's will open at 4:30am. The Chili's next to it opens at 5:30am daily. The first flight to Lexington would be at 7:50am CST. Between now and then all 3 of us just wandered around the airport.

"Chai and Luk, party of 3, please come up!" We were thrilled to hear this as a worker announced the stand-by passenger list. Finally we could get on a plane. A few minutes later the flight attendent announced that 3 stand-by passengers had to get off the plane since it was overweight. They would be re-scheduled for another flight. Fortunately, our names were not called and we got back to Lexington at around 11:30am EST.

Our baggages spent another night in Chicago before we picked them up on Aug 1st.

"Run, Forest! Run!"--Part 2 of L.R.L.D.&UAI.

So, we decided to rent a car to drive back to Lexington. It was kind of a crazy thought because the drive would take 6-7 hours and we all didn't get much sleep (for me, about 2-3 hours the most) during the past 24 hours. Anyway, we walked out the security check point near gate F1 (see map of O'Hare airport) to look for some car rental companies. After failing to find a car (either no cars were available or nobody answered the phone), we just hoped that we could get on the flight to Louisville which was delayed to 11 pm CST. The 2 security check points in Terminal 2 were closed and we only had 15 minutes to get to the gate. The officer at the employee security check point wouldn't let us in but rudely told us to go to Terminal 1. We ran in the direction his finger was pointing at, but realized that it was Terminal 3 when we were trying to catch our breath!!! We ran in the opposite direction, hoping that we would make it to Terminal 1 on time (and wouldn't collapse due to excessive physical activity)...