More often than not, my annual travels commence with attendance at the Florida United Numismatists (FUN) convention in Orlando. The year, however, the new year commenced with a trip to New York City the following week to attend the 51st Annual New York International Numismatic Convention. Two weeks later, January closed out with a drive out to Fargo, N.D., to take in a landmark event, the Red River Valley Coin Club’s (RRVCC) 63rd annual winter show. My travels to New York commenced with a 43-mile drive to the Appleton airport on Wednesday morning. Leaving home early, at about 8:30, for a scheduled 11:45 United Express departure, with a connection at O’Hare, a radio news report informed that a nationwide “ground stop” was in place for all commercial aircraft due to a failure of the “Notam System” that provides guidance to airline pilots. An ominous sign – the first nationwide air traffic control ground stop implemented since 9/11, more than 21 years ago.
With the ground stop lifted by late morning, my flight to O’Hare departed and reached its destination about an hour behind schedule. The scheduled connection of just over an hour stretched out to nearly three hours, with push-back being delayed from 2:10 to 4:15, awaiting arrival of the in-bound aircraft, allowing plenty of time to
