leaving, or not

Yesterday I took the rare action of preparing several blog posts at once. I didn't write them all, but I started, got the photos together, mapped out the order in which I'd like the posts to appear. What would make me spend my valuable weekend outdoors time in front of the computer? Was it to help forget a painful loss that my second-favorite local sports received? Was I just bored? Did I forget that I have a list of at least a dozen projects I could do around the house?

No, I had planned on leaving town yesterday evening for a few days in the Boston area on business. (Good timing for a trip east, right?) When I'm out of town I obviously don't have access to my garden, so must plan ahead. With hurricane Sandy expected to start hitting the east coast on Monday, Southwest had cancelled all flights to Boston for Monday and Tuesday -- I felt lucky that I had a ticket to fly out Sunday evening.

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So the first post I planned for the week was on leaves. How there's only one tree in my front yard this year that compels me to get out the rake, since the other tree's leaves have for the most part been scattered far and wide by recent winds.

There would be a double meaning to this post though: leaves falling, and me leaving town.

Only it didn't happen that way. Yes the leaves are still falling from that Sugar Maple, but in the time that it took me to get to the airport yesterday afternoon my flight had been cancelled. I'm guessing the storm was affecting the area sooner than they expected, and I can certainly understand the airline's reasons for doing this, but it's a bad feeling to be standing at the counter knowing that there's no way to get to your destination. That's never happened to me before.

Because flights for Monday and Tuesday were already cancelled, there were no flights out to Boston until Tuesday night at the very earliest. The airline attendant said that Thursday was a more realistic estimate because of the number of people that would be looking for tickets on Wednesday.

So my trip was cancelled, and I didn't get to leave.

Turns out that was probably for the best, as even though the Boston area won't be the hardest hit by the storm, they're still expecting it to be nasty and potentially dangerous, and the governor has asked private companies in the area to close to help keep the roads free for emergency vehicles.

So even if I had made the trip I would probably be sitting in my hotel room relying on email and Skype as I do when at home, but spending a lot of time looking out the window watching the storm.

I'm hoping Sandy does less damage than they're predicting, but if you're in the affected areas please be safe! My thoughts are with you, even though I am not.

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