Rain Means that Planes Don’t

Safety first.  I’ll support that.  I’d rather be late or miss an appointment than secure a laid back ride in a slow moving hearse.  It was raining today.  It was pouring in fact.  We’ve had a few days in a row like this.  I picked my daughter up from a coffee shop where she was bidding her dear friend goodbye.  This girl was moving back to North Carolina today.  And on the ride back to our home I mentioned how easy it was to hydroplane in weather like this.   “If you slam the brakes they can lock them and you’ll just slide and skid.”

And while that’s bad news in a car, it is real bad news in a jet plane.  In China, certainly in Beijing at least, rain means that planes don’t fly.  I don’t want to be a hell raiser here, but I seem to recall that in most parts of the world, planes take off and land in the rain with relative impunity.  No, not in hurricanes or monsoons or flash floods, we can agree that some weather is off limits.  But today it is just simply raining.  I already know I’m in trouble.

Instinctively, nervousness wanes.  I looked on-line around 1:00PM and sure enough my 8:30PM flight was cancelled.  Normally Ctrip, the travel service, texts you to inform you and so I called to confirm.  “We were just about to notify you.”  Great.  Later a “specialist” called me back.   All flights out of Beijing are cancelled.   Economy?  Business?  Any airline?  Any other destinations?  “No sir.  All flights out of Beijing are shown cancelled.”  “I see.”  “And the first flight tomorrow?  “There is one at 6:30AM, but I couldn’t guarantee that this would arrive in tonight to be ready for the morning departure.  You may want to check the trains.”

I was cooking that plan in parallel and as feared, all the trains are sold out, as well. I even started looking into express buses, which, as the travel logs I read suggested would be a rather remarkable compromise.  Then my nephew, intrepid lad, suggested there was a high-speed train to Nanjing.  “I’ll take it.”  From there I can get a cab or some kind of local train. 

I’m on the train to Nanjing now.  The high-speed train down south is only four hours.  The train’s full, but it isn’t packed.  It’s unquestionably more comfortable than the plane.  In the southern capital a driver whom a friend has arranged awaits.  If the high speed train continued on to Shanghai, it would only be another hour or so, but as it is, I’ll need to drive for three an a half hours on the high way for three times what the train ticket cost.  Irrelevant though, with my leatherback travel disposition, once I’ve decided to find a way to be there.