This ain't no amazing race

Warning: If you suffer from PTSD related to airline travel, you may not want to read this post. The story told here involves missed flights, standby drama, a wedding, airport sprints and security pat-downs. No one was killed during the course of this story, but many threats, spoken and unspoken, were issued. This is the story of how a quicky weekend getaway can turn into a trip from hell.

Last weekend, Wendy and I traveled from Seattle to St. Louis to Boston for a wedding. The trip planning was brilliantly executed by Wendy and she secured a great airfare/hotel combo deal for us. So what went wrong? I had one responsibility -- set the alarm and get up first, starting the whole thing in motion like a series of dominos. This was a crucial part of the operation since we had to leave at the butt-crack of dawn, otherwise known as 4 am.

So, again, what went wrong? The correct answer is, I f**ed up. I set the alarm for the correct time, butt-crack - 40 minutes, but I didn't actually turn the alarm on. To repeat, I didn't turn the fricken thing on.

At precisely we-are-so-screwed o'clock on Friday, otherwise known as 5:45 am, Wendy's cell phone began it's attack on our sleep (she has the Sony Ericsson Star Wars special edition with the Tie Fighter ring tone). I was amused at first, thinking, why are the silly people calling Wendy right now? Amusement quickly turned to horror when I glanced at my clock. "OMYGAWD, OMYGAWD, OMYGAWD!!!! It's almost 6 o'clock. OMYGAWDDDDD!!!" Wendy's response was unprintable, and continued to be for the next hour or so. Not that I blamed her, I had totally messed up her finely tuned plans. No doubt, this was going to be a crappy day.

She managed to get an airline employee on the phone and for that effort we were given a standby “possibility” for a 10 am flight. As you know, a standby is a possibility, not necessarily a probability. We powered out of the house at close to 6:30 and won that round of standby roulette, but barely. We got two of the last 4 available seats. I sat between two American airline employees and Wendy sat between a couple of guys in an exit row. My airline pilot had a Dell Tablet PC and he put the closed caption on so I could watch with him. We watched Frequency, which I hadn't seen yet... great way to kill some time on a flight. What a great use for the Tablet. He swiveled that screen around and tilted it up and voila. So, Julie, I finally know why Tablets are so cool ;-P

There was another gadget geek in my section. A young woman in front of me was editing a sequence of images on an Apple. I’m not sure if it was a motion or still sequence. Later she switched to a Sony PSP and a driving game. The resolution on that was great, much better than the Gameboy Advance I had with me. On a later flight, a guy in front of me was working on a PowerPoint presentation/proposal involving Playboy branding, I kid you not.

Now we're sitting in St. Louis, waiting to see if the standby luck holds so we can get on the same plane as our luggage. We had some very quick food and probably ate too fast, hopefully we'll both recover from that soon. I already feel sick enough about putting us in this position, I don’t need to get sick on airport food.

… later on Friday …

Halleluiah, once again the standby dice rolled in our favor. A cool thing that happened today was that we made a friend while waiting in the American counter line in Seattle. I do not recall his name, but Wendy probably will. He'd been bounced back and forth between Alaska and American but ended up on the same Seattle to St. Louis flight we did. He was also on the same Boston flight, and Wendy ended up sitting next to him. It was just funny because we ended up striking up a conversation with him and another guy while in line, then seeing him again every time we turned around. I'm sure if I saw him sometime in the future, I'd recognize him but I might not remember why.

We arrived in Boston between 9:30 and 10 pm and rode public transit to a stop near the Bullfinch Hotel, our home away from home. We got our room, twice, and then went out in search of a little bit to eat and something to drink. By "twice" I mean they tried to stuff us in a little shoebox of a room but Wendy protested because she’d reserved a deluxe room with a king-size bed. So we were promptly moved up to the 8th floor and shown to a room with a king-sized bed that completely dominated an otherwise not very large room. I guess it was a boot-box instead of a shoebox. So we strolled down the street to a place the concierge recommended, called Anthem, in the hopes that they’d still be serving some kind of food we’d be interested in eating. By then it was almost eleven pm on the East coast, but something like 8 pm to us. The surrounding blocks had a large number of pubs and dance clubs, with clumps of partying young adults noisily traversing the sidewalks. In contrast, the Anthem was a nice, adult kind of place. We listened to a nice jazz quartet while noshing on a lovely 5 cheese fondue with spinach and artichoke. Yum! I had a couple of Oatmeal stouts from an English Brewery by way of a Tukwila, Washington distributor. Wendy warmed up with a coffee with chocolate chip liquor. We watched to tail end of the Phoenix - Dallas game and that was that. It was time to hit the hay.

-- Saturday morning --

Today is wedding day, the reason we came to Boston in the first place. We had flown all this way to witness the joining of Richard and Amy, friends of ours through different paths. We know Richard better, because we’ve actually hung out more online and in person. We’ve known Amy longer, but mostly online as a member of a large email list. Watching them get to know each other and become a strong couple has been amazing and unexpected. I look forward to knowing the two of them for many, many years to come.

The wedding took place in the Church of the Advent, an Episcopal church that Richard has attended for years, and for whom he sings in the choir. The architecture and ornate décor of the church was amazing and the ceremony rivaled a Catholic wedding. The reception after featured scrumptious food and a cake that was as divine tasting as it looked. We met several other of Richard and Amy’s “online” friends: Johnny and his DearWife, Kellnerin and Hubby, Adhoc, and iGrrl, Richard’s best person. We already knew the photographer, Joh3n, but hadn’t seen him in years.

The church was in Beacon Hill, which was a short cab ride from our hotel in the Bullfinch Triangle, near the Fleet Center. When we go back to Boston, I’d like to spend more time in Beacon Hill. Of course, there’s all kinds of things we want to do when we come back and there isn’t any time to do them during this trip.

Later that evening, after much deserved naps, we met up with Joh3n and his wife, Amy. What is it with astrophysicists and wives named Amy, huh? It was our first chance to hang out with her and we all had a great time. We approve, Joh3n, you may keep her. We grabbed some food and drink at a nearby bar called Sports. This bar contained an unhealthy number of televisions, including the small ones in the restrooms.

-- Sunday –
We got up relatively early so we could head out to Richard and Amy’s for brunch before flying out this evening. The nearest T station was only a couple of blocks away and we easily caught the necessary train and headed out toward Ambrose. Richard’s carpool buddies chauffeured us from the station to the house (thanks, guys). We hung out with family and friends and enjoyed a yummy brunch and good coffee. Carpool Guy drove us back to the station and we made our way to the airport.

-- later on Sunday ---

It's a little after 6 pm EDT and Wendy and I are heading to Chicago. This was not on our original itinerary, but that plan was chucked to the wind hours ago when we learned a valuable lesson at the American Eagle ticket counter. If you miss the first leg of a round trip flight, the rest of your reservation is cancelled. Without notice, without word, at least with American -- ymmv with other airlines. When we set out from Richard and Amy's house this afternoon, we were filled with optimism and happy at the efficiency of Boston's transit system. We made our way to the ticket counter 2 hours before our flight. That's when the second half of the 'alarm clock' curse came into effect: we had no return flight, we didn't exist in the system at all. WTF??!!!! Why hadn't anyone told us about the cancellation? The American Eagle employee who gave us the news also gave us an impenetrable look and an attitude of complete non-empathy, which we were to encounter over and over again in a seemingly endless transit of American Airlines facilities at the Logan airport. For the second time, we were given the 'special' treatment at the security gate, presumably because of our standby status. Before getting on this flight, we missed out on the first two flights we tried, one to Chicago, one to St. Louis (our original flight). Oh, *one* of us could have made it to St. Louis, but only one and we refused to be split up. Better to spend the night together somewhere then end up in different parts of the country.

Meanwhile, our luggage makes it way across the country in the belly of another airplane, but not until we’d grabbed our remaining pairs of clean underwear (one each) and our toiletries.

-- Sunday night, Chicago --

Our plane made excellent time between Boston and Chicago and we arrived about 15 minutes ahead of schedule. There was a tiny chance we might be able to grab seats on the 7:02 pm flight to Seattle. We made a mad, Amazing Race style sprint from Gate K1 to H16, basically across the armpit of the terminal and to the end of the next arm, about a half a mile. I was wheezing half-way through and coughing myself raw by the time we got there. Because of the stuff we'd pulled from our checked luggage, so not only did my laptop bag and Wendy's backpack actually weigh more, they were starting to feel heavier and heavier as we huffed our way down the terminal. Oh, and before I forget, a big shout out to the folks on our Logan to O'Hare flight who let us get off the plane before they did. So we arrived at gate H16 in record time, but there was absolutely, totally not a damn seat left on that flight. We checked the displays and sprinted to a gate promising a flight to Portland, Oregon, but it was too late for that one, too.

So, now it's 7:50 pm, Central time, and we continue to make our surreal and halting way westward. We are halfway on a flight to Seattle, that half being Wendy. So we have one booked seat and one standby. This is our last chance out of Chicago tonight and the flight is oversold. That's the story of our entire day. We've had 3 or 4 of 12 people in an American Airlines uniform show any kind of compassion for us. One of them just got us on the Boston to Chicago flight. Would we find a similarly humane person to help us get to Seattle tonight?

I'd love to just chuck the whole American connection and find a flight with someone else but that's cost prohibitive. We already gave money to this fricken airline and they're damn well going to get us home. Some how, some time, some day. It's looking less and less likely that I'll make it into work tomorrow, which puts my plans for this week in a bit of trouble. I had wanted to work from home partial days Tuesday and Wednesday and attend some sessions of the IPMA forum. That may not be possible.

-- Sunday, Chicago, a little later --

Ok, so are you starting to wonder if this story is going to have a happy ending? Me, too, although things are looking distinctly better at the moment. It's 9:30 pm Central and I'm sitting in a very posh room at the Hyatt Regency O'Hare. I have no idea what this room would normally cost because we're not paying for it. It’s a comp from American Airlines, but it’s not because they admitted that they did anything wrong by us. Instead we were able to take advantage of the fact that they totally overbooked the Seattle flight we were trying to get on, and remember, Wendy had a ticket. They started calling for volunteers to give up their seats on flight 1817 so they could get some other folks on. I was sitting with my head in my hands thinking that our luck at standby roulette had just run out, there was no way I was getting a seat on that plane. We listened as they offered a hotel room, food vouchers, free shuttle and seats on flights tomorrow morning to ticket holding volunteers. There was a slightly delayed reaction in the team of Wndl-Buggy, (which would not have worked in our favor if we'd been competing with Rob and Amber), but as it was, we were only competing with other normal people and the entire American Airlines establishment. Wendy jumped up and went to the counter.

Wendy told them they could have her flight 1817 ticket as long as they comped room and board for both of us and guaranteed us tickets on a flight to Seattle tomorrow. They took our offer and here we are in this nice room at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare, getting ready to go down to the bar for dinner. We’ve got a balcony, the moon is up and we can see the Chicago skyline. Looking directly down, we can look through the domed cover of the round swimming pool.

-- Monday, Chicago --

And so we continue our story at gate L2B of Chicago's O'Hare airport at noon. I've purchased a souvenir t-shirt, less to commemorate this journey and more to limit the amount of palpable stink I carry around me. We spent a comfortable night at the Hyatt. We ate yummy dinner salads at the Knuckles Sports Bar downstairs, and had a breakfast of Almond Croissants, bananas and coffee. The soaring interior of the main lobby at the Hyatt resembles the inside of the Deathstar, hopefully this picture captures some of that.

I have to admit that even though we'd been reassured our seats were booked on the Alaskan flight to Seattle, I was a bit nervous approaching the ticket counter. And why shouldn't I be? The only part of this weekend that went as planned was the wedding, reception and brunch. Everything else was sucked into the timeless unreality that is airline travel. Oh, and let’s not forget the "special sauce." We talked about it before leaving the room this morning, "you know we're gonna get the special again today, might as well just be ready for it." And so it was, we approached security and were once again led to the side. We efficiently separated our belongings into the trays. The woman started explaining the drill but we had already assumed the position. Three for three... shouldn't we get a prize for that? Oh, well, getting home tonight will be reward enough.

When we called home to talk to Zelly last night it was kinda rough. She had a sob in her voice that was contagious and it was all I could to not start crying. Even though she's going through one of her rebellious phases and "no" is her favorite word, we all miss each other a lot and I can’t wait to give her a big hug. I called work last night and left some messages about my delayed return. This morning I talked to a couple of people and hopefully they won't be too inconvenienced by this. There is one roll-out for a pilot group of users that I'm supposed to be managing today, but there's only a small chance something will go wrong with it (so saith the developer, heh heh).

It's wild how consuming the process of getting places can be when things don't go as planned. This was supposed to be a quicky weekend thing and even though we only went a day over that, the energy and emotion spent are worth a week at least. Now that we have actually tickets for actual seats on a flight to our home state, my shoulders are starting to unwind, but I won't really let go of the tension until I'm sitting at home with my girls and cats and looking forward to a good night's sleep in my own bed. And, probably, I'll have a travel stress hangover for a couple of days after.

Speaking of security, we got the special sauce all four times we went through. Our tickets have been marked by the airline, probably because we’ve been doing standby for so many flights and now have no luggage. For all that special attention, the lighter Wendy bought in Boston made it on the plane from Boston to Chicago. Coming back to O’Hare today, however, she was found out. Not that I want to do a slam the security piece here, because for the most part the people working in security have been more polite, considerate and speedy than almost anyone working for American Airlines.

-- Monday, Chicago, still waiting --

The time is now 6:15pm Central, and we're still sitting in the O'Hare airport. Yes, that's right, we should be well on our way to Seattle by now, but we're still here. No, no, it's not standby drama anymore, now it's a broken plane. The curse lives on. We've gotten some vouchers for food and we've made a friend and the wait continues. It's just unbelievable. We were supposed to leave at 3:40 or so. At first we were getting updates every 15 minutes, then it was a half hour, then we were told it'd be another 45 minutes and now we're waiting for an update at 7 pm. At least we're not running from gate to gate anymore. I really feel sorry for the parents with little kids and I'm really happy we don't have Hazel with us. Gawd that would be hellish. It's really too bad we didn't get to enjoy our time in Chicago. This is giving new meaning to the idea of Chicago Blues.

We’ve had plenty of time to get to know people while waiting, including our new best friend, Pauly. She works for DSHS as a parent’s advocate for people with kids in the mental health system. Before long we were all swapping life stories and the waiting was a little more bearable. There was also the geek boy who was heading to his first day as an intern at Microsoft. He was a little worried about having to navigate from SeaTac to Redmond in his rental car in the middle of the night, but we reassured him it was probably one of the easiest destinations.

Another guy, a traveling salesman, had a wireless USB adaptor and I struck up a conversation so I could pump him for information about it. It was a Linksys portable wireless-G adaptor but I can’t find it on the Linksys site, so it might be an older one. He said it worked better than the internal card variety.

Five hours later, just before 9 pm central, we finally left Chicago. I was really surprised because I was sure that plane wasn’t going to take off, not after 5 hours of testing. For some reason, we’ve got to touch down in Denver to top off the fuel tanks. Is there no fuel in Chicago for our Alaskan plane? They told us it’d only be 20 minutes, but no one believes it. Also, soon after sealing the doors, they inform us that all the food they loaded into the plane over 5 hours ago has spoiled, all except the oatmeal cookies. All that time with the power off to the coolers in the plane and no one thought to unload the food. The crew apologized and explained that we wouldn’t be able to get off the plane in Denver to gather food, but I don’t think anyone on that plane wanted to lengthen this trip anyway. So we got oatmeal cookies and two rounds of beverage service. Luckily lots of us had food we’d gathered while spending our vouchers in Chicago.

-- Tuesday, 12:45 am, Seattle --

Pauly, who lives in Spanaway, would have gotten a ride from her husband, who was staying at work a little late. That was when we were going to get into Seattle at about 7 pm. We offered to give Pauly a lift to meet him partway and that worked out well. We finally got home at around 2 am. I logged into work to see what email damage had accumulated during the day. I finally rolled into bed around 3 am, with no intention of setting any alarms. My brain felt like mush, my eyes were glued to my eyelids and my body felt like it’d been run through a luggage chute, continuously.

-- Tuesday afternoon, 3:20 pm --

Wendy is napping on the couch while I'm off smoozing with geeks at the IPMA Forum. Suddenly an alarm goes off. The real story of the alarm clock curse is that I set the time for pm, rather than am.

-- back to reality, such as it is --

I got back to work physically on Wednesday, working from home part of Tuesday. Wednesday evening I discovered that not only were my eyes extremely bloodshot, still, but there was an unmoving spot on my right eye, at the edge of my iris where it aligns with my contact. Wednesday, after work, I drove up to Seatac and reclaimed our luggage. Thursday morning, my right eye was still bloodshot and aching a bit. I called my optometrist who wanted to see me right away. He took one look at it and told me I had an ulcer, probably brought on by all the stress and dry air I’d been basking in all weekend, plus sleeping off and on with my contacts in. So now I’m on contact restriction for most of a week and I get to put drops in my eyes four times a day. I’m hoping this is the last effect of the curse of the alarm clock.

Lessons learned: DON'T MISS YOUR FLIGHT!!!! If you do, be damned sure they don't cancel all the rest of your flights. If they do, be prepared for half mile sprints down crowded airport terminals, and unless you're OJ, you ain't gonna be pretty doing it. Know the security rules and how to get through it all efficiently and with good humor, even if you get the special sauce. The security people won't move any faster if you're pissed off, and it might even slow them down. Also, beware of random infections, ulcers and loss of mental acuity and emotional stability (that would be me, Wendy seems to have weathered the whole affair quite nicely).

Will I ever travel by airplane again? Well, yeah, I’m not a fool, but I’ll be hesitant to take an American flight again and I’ll make damned, triple sure the alarm clock is set correctly.

Maybe I’ll have Wendy do it.

Posted by buggy at May 28, 2005 02:51 PM