Issaquah woman is still waiting out Irene in New York City
August 30, 2011
By Tom Corrigan
NEW — 3:30 p.m. Aug. 30, 2011
A nonfiction author and online marketing specialist with a Seattle firm, Issaquah’s Maureen Francisco, 34, was slated to be a speaker at the national convention of Ascend, a nonprofit professional organization for people of pan-Asian background.
Expected to draw up to 1,500 people, the convention was set for Aug. 27-29 in New York City. As you might have guessed, Hurricane Irene washed out those plans.
Francisco arrived in New York on Thursday. She said she was in business meetings all day Friday, emerging to find out the convention was cancelled because of the impending arrival of Irene. Without the convention to keep her in the city, Francisco changed her Tuesday flight home to Monday.
“I was trying to outsmart Irene, but she outsmarted me,” Francisco said from a hotel room in Manhattan.
Francisco’s Monday flight was cancelled. There were no flights available on her original travel date. Francisco said she finally was able to book a ride home Wednesday.
The obvious question is, what was it like being in the city when Irene showed up?
“Honestly, it looked like another windy, rainy day in Seattle,” Francisco said, quickly adding she didn’t want to minimize the experience of others who were hit much harder by the storm.
Francisco said she took a walk through Manhattan on Saturday and said one of the biggest cities in the world had simply shut its doors.
“It was like a ghost town,” she said.
Even the local coffee shops were closed, but Francisco was able to track down a cup. A man approached her wondering where she had been able to find an open coffee stand.
“I will never look at a cup of coffee the same way again,” she said.
Doing a lot of virtual or online work, Francisco never actually has met some of the people she does business with. While stuck in New York, she took the opportunity to visit some of her colleagues and customers, even meeting her literary agent face to face for the first time. Francisco is about to see publication of what she called a how-to book on the American dream for immigrants.
Francisco said that, for her, the trip actually proved productive from a business standpoint, but also expensive. She is paying for at least one extra day in a hotel, not to mention some extra travel expenses. Francisco said most restaurants were closed during the storm, with only higher-end eateries remaining open, a situation that noticeably increased the cost of her meals.
Francisco finally commented that she brought along two evening gowns the hurricane made sure she was not able to use.
All in all, again saying she didn’t want to minimize the impact of the storm in other parts of the country, Francisco didn’t really seem to mind being stuck in New York.
“What an experience!” she said. “I became a part of history.”
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