Just when I thought my trip to Middlebury in September couldn’t have been worse, I experienced a new level of bad luck. My first flight yesterday from California to Philly went very smoothly, and my second flight seemed to be on time. We got on board and went out to the runway where we sat for at least 45 minutes before the pilot told us that the weather in Burlington was so bad that they couldn’t land and that we had to sit it out for a couple hours. So a bunch of other midd kids and I were just hanging out in the airport for an hour or so waiting to hear back from US airways as to whether we would be able to get there or not. By this time I had been traveling for 12 hours. I went to the gate to check with an attendant about the flight and sure enough there was no one there to answer questions. I noticed the pilots coming off the plane ready to head home, when I knew there was something wrong. If the pilots are leaving how would we ever get there? The pilots apologized and told us that the flight was canceled and that they had no idea why no one had told us that already. Everyone was all just so oblivious to it all. It was a good thing I ran down the pilots before they left the airport because otherwise everyone would have been just waiting there for hours. So the next step was to wait in this two hour long line to get our flights rescheduled. Sure enough no flights were available for the next couple days unless you wanted to pay a fortune and switch airlines. Everyone was hectically trying to figure out an alternative route whether by different airport, car, or train. People were also figuring out where they would stay for the evening. This ties my blog post to the digital media aspect as literally every single person in line trying to figure out new planes was using some sort of device, mostly iPhones and Droids to make other accommodations. What would life have been life if we didn’t have our phones. I honestly don’t know what I would have done. Our phones are so crucial at moments like these that without them we would have been stranded. In my case, I was able to contact a friend at nearby Swarthmore College and stay with there for the night, and then book a 6:30 am morning amtrak to New york and then up to Vermont all using my little iPhone.\

People using their mobile devices to find alternative routes