A look back at 2014, part 1

          The year of 2014 was rough for me.  Full of chaos, it exposed my unpreparedness, as well as my lack of discipline.  However, that’s life, and you need to plan for success, if you want success.

          I started the year in another country, and on another Continent.  A good friend of mine had asked me in 2013 if I wanted to visit a mutual friend and his family in France.  We planned to go over the Christmas and New Year's break from work because both of us would have to take less time off, and it seemed like a good time to fly.  It was a BLAST,  something I'd like to do again, but not until after I jet around this crazy country visiting various historical sites.

          On January 1st, we said our goodbyes to our hosts and boarded the train that would take us from the Mediterranean back to Geneva, where we would fly back to New York, and from there, back to Omaha.  In Europe, everything went smoothly, from the trains to finding a nice hotel, to getting through foreign air ports (which is pretty rare from what I've been told).  Because we'd purchased our tickets so late (sorry, dude), our return flight was disjointed in NYC.  We found a relatively cheap bus/van route between NY and NJ that would get us to the airport on time, and we would be travelling right through the middle of NYC.  So far, things were going great!  I'd never been to "The Big Apple", so I was excited to see a small portion of the city.  I even got a picture of Grand Central Station.

          When we got to NJ, we got in line to 'check in' and get our tickets for the flight to Omaha, the last leg of our journey.  That's when things really slowed down.  There was a snow storm predicted that evening, and it started to snow while we were in line.  They were preemptively cancelling flights because of the storm.  We didn't notice that, though, while we waited in line for over 60 minutes in a line that barely moved.  By the time we go close, the board showed all outgoing flights cancelled for the evening.  I had a feeling that 2014 would be a year of chaos.  We'll just say I wasn't aware just how crazy it would get, and how painful it could be.

          We slept in the airport that night; well, we kind of slept.  The only warm place to sleep was literally laying on the heat registers, and all of the food vendors were closed.  I found out later that because we'd had an international flight, we could have stayed in one of the hotels.  The next morning, we hit up the ticket counter very early because our flight the next day was a standby flight, and 2 more days out.  I think we went to the counter 20 times or more, by 10 am.  We took the airport busses between the buildings, because we heard that they were setting up flights for those that had been cancelled in a different area of the airport.  We lugged our luggage, to find since that we'd already had a flight scheduled for a few days out, we shouldn't have made the trip.  That was frustrating, to say the least.  We went back to our original terminal, and checked the ticket counter a few more times.  The employees were always respectful and kind, even when people got angry.

          After a few more trips, and trying to figure out which airports had connecting flights to Omaha, we FINALLY had a flight, but it was leaving in 30 minutes.  We took the tickets, and I wanted to hug the guy behind the counter, but we were running out of time.  We ran (literally) through the airport to get to the right terminal for the flight we'd just got.  After being stopped by the TSA (because apparently fat guys are more of a threat) for the 'extra' screening through an xray scanner (I didn't argue because they wouldn't like what they'd see) and somehow losing a few dollars in coins and stuff from France, I took off again to get to the right counter.  We ran up, and they were delayed for 2 hours so that they could un-freeze the engines.

          I considered that fairly reasonable, engines are pretty important for an airplane.  The two hour delay became 2 1/2, which became 3.  I kept looking at my watch, and started to get nervous.  If we were postponed too much longer, we'd miss our flight in Denver, and be stuck there.  Thankfully, we boarded soon after, and were on our way, past our final destination, but a step closer.  It would be very close, but we could still make our flight!

          Somehow, they made up time in the air, and we had 25-30 minutes to get to our next ticket counter to get on our connecting flight to Omaha.  We ran there, and they weren't yet boarding.  We sat there for a while, waiting, conversing with our fellow passengers to Nebraska.  We got word that the plane was ready, but proper paperwork hadn't been filed and there were communication issues with fax machines.  About an hour later, the paperwork still hadn't been filed, and they were running out of time to get that plane out of the airport.  Thankfully, they got whatever they needed to filed, and we boarded a few hours late.  Because of limited availability, I got to sit in first class (Thanks again, dude!).  I just wanted to listen to music, and get a little sleep, since we hadn't really had too much of that the past two days.

          Par for the course, I slept little, and just tried relaxing... we were FINALLY headed home.  It'd been nearly three weeks since we'd seen our families, and we'd been living out of our suitcases.  I was sitting across the aisle from a stunning blonde woman (Thanks, yet again) who was pretty nice.  She was probably 7-8 years older, and a pretty independent and business oriented.  She was coming back to Omaha because her mother was sick, and was from Omaha.  I didn't even get her name, and I still don't know how to interpret the looks I got, or the conversation we had, but I'm glad someone was picking Taylor and I up from the airport.

          I got home that night after 1 am, and boy was that a good feeling to be back in my own bed.

          I woke up the next afternoon to laundry and a Chiefs playoff game.  It was their first playoff game in years, and were trying to get their first playoff victory in almost 20 years.  They ended up losing a 28-point second half lead to a team that got thoroughly dismantled the next game.  That hurt, but probably more for some of the players than the fans.  Jamaal Charles and Brandon Flowers were taken out of the game for possible concussions, Knile Davis broke his leg, and Dwayne Bowe was playing with what he thought was a broken foot.

          This was just the first 4 days of 2014, and I could already tell it was going to be chaotic.  What I didn't try to do, however, was get myself prepared for the chaos spiritually, or in any other way, really.  This lack of forward planning, and preparation for the future really hurt in 2014.