Cherie Priest

So I’m sitting in a hotel lobby with my cousin, and when he’s finished checking his work email, we have to leave (he’s driving. I go when he goes). But I wanted to let everyone know I’m alive, and that I’m in Florida, and that it’s beautiful here, and that yes — I know it’s a winter wonderland in Seattle right now. Hell, it was a winter wonderland before I left; in fact, it seems I made it out to Salt Lake City on one of the last flights that left SeaTac for a day or two.

This has been — and I say this as someone who has flown regularly since I was a small child — the absolute worst travel experience of my life. It is not to be exaggerated, nor believed. It took me two full days to reach Florida via four planes, a missed flight or two or three, and 48 hours without sleep or internet.

However, during my long hours of stranded boredom, I did in fact do a bit of “dry blogging”*. So beneath the following “Read More” cut, I’m posting my extended, protracted, uncut adventures in travel. Keep in mind, this will only bring you up to my arrival in Orlando, and does not include any wacky family adventures. Those will come later.

But if you’re curious, or if you’d like to commiserate, or if you only want to point at my misery and laugh, well, here you go. Click below.

It never snows in Seattle

I awoke this morning to a hungry cat and several inches of white fluff; the streets were so thoroughly covered that cars were struggling to move forward on the straight stretches, never mind the hills. Of course, according to the perennial liars we refer to as weather-people, the snow was supposed to stop and all but vanish by ten in the morning … then noon … then maybe suppertime.

It is a testament to the bravery and driving prowess of my husband that I ever made it to the airport at all. We left home around 9:30 this morning so I could catch a 1:00 flight … which, if it had left on time, I would’ve barely made. It took us the better part of a couple hours to drive the twenty miles between our apartment and SeaTac, and once I’d been lovingly deposited at the Delta entrance, I discovered that my flight had been delayed to 2:30. This meant I’d need to rebook, because I was absolutely going to miss my connecting flight.

So I waited an hour and a half in a line that wound halfway around the concourse, only to be told that my options were few and none were particularly good. In short, I was told there is no way in hell I’m going to make Florida today. I could either (a). wait until tomorrow and take a quasi-direct flight to Tampa, or (b). I could wait for my delayed Salt Lake City flight, get a hotel room in Utah, and then chase my tail around the east for awhile tomorrow before finally arriving in Orlando a little after suppertime.

Option (a) was more or less untenable. I flat refused to call my poor husband and make him drive all the way back to pick me up and take me home; and besides, the weather is supposed to get even worse over the next few days. I felt like I was in a position of “Get out while the getting’s good,” so I ran with option (b).

As I sit here typing, the Salt Lake City flight has been delayed until our hypothetical departure time shall be around 7:30. Frankly, I don’t really give a damn. What really worries me is the prospect of being stuck on the tarmac for hours, because – new and exciting problem alert – the airport is purportedly down to one single runway. Thus, planes are forced to wait their turn, sometimes for quite awhile. And really, so long as I get into Salt Lake City before dawn tomorrow (provided that my next flight appears on time and is ready to go when it’s supposed to be – what are the odds? Yeah, I know), I’ll be all right.

As things stand, we likely won’t get into Utah before about eleven o’clock local time, if we’re lucky. My connecting flight leaves about eight in the morning, and I have to go through the ticket gate because I am classified as an “inconvenienced passenger” and have no seat assignment. This will no doubt translate to another amazing wait in another amazing line, and if I intend to make the aforementioned eight o’clock flight, I ought to be at the airport by six, if I know what’s good for me.

This makes the prospect of a hotel even less appealing than it was before the delays. Before the delays, the main unappealing aspect of a hotel in Salt Lake City is the fact that I will be compelled to pay for it – because the delay is (screamingly, obviously) due to the weather, and not the fault of the airline. I do not dispute this fact. It is not the fault of Delta that word on the street says it never snows in Seattle, and the street is full of liars.

I do not want to pay for a hotel, somewhere out past the airport. I especially do not want to pay to spend maybe four or five hours in a hotel somewhere out past the airport, when I will only be forced to rise before dawn and pay for a shuttle or cab to take me back to the airport, which I will have only so recently escaped.

So here’s my present cunning plan: In the event that I ever make it to Salt Lake City tonight, I am going to find a quiet corner and sleep in the airport.

I’ve spent a night or two in airports in the past, when I was a child, but back then I had a host of nice stewardesses to baby me because me and my little sister were flying alone – and we were removed to the staff lounge where there was a huge television, toys, and actual food if we wanted it. However, I am no longer a tow-headed little girl with a baby sister to shepherd through the cold terminals of a strange airport.

Now I’m a pissy thirty-three year old with half an eyebrow, a pair of ratty fingerless gloves, and raging case of indigestion from the airport hot dog lunch.

I doubt anyone will take pity on me and invite me back to the staff lounge on this occasion. So I’m trying to look upon all this as an adventure. It’s not like there’s anything I can do about it, after all – can’t stop the snow. Can’t move the planes. Can’t open more runways. All I can do is find a corner with an outlet, camp with a scowl, and hope for the best.

* * * * * *

In the bathroom, there’s a girl with a cheerful blond puppy. It’s too fluffy to be a golden retriever, and too smooth-coated to be a cocker spaniel, but it looks like it could be a mix of the two. It’s nomming on a chew toy and, as far as anyone can tell, it does not give a damn that it’s going to be living in an airport for the next 24 hours.

It must be nice to be a puppy.

* * * * * *

They were wrong about our plane; apparently there’s another plane going to Salt Lake City and they got our information confused. Our correct and proper plane arrived around 5:30 and took off around 6:15, only five hours late, dammit all to hell. I arrived in Utah about a quarter ‘till nine, local time, and the passengers were offered discount vouchers for a nearby hotel – since pretty much all of us missed our connecting flights.

Somewhere along the way, I picked up a new friend. I sort of attract kids, even teenagers, sometimes. I guess I look younger than my age, maybe, or I just have “one of those faces;” but Sarah was flying alone and we were all nervous. She was particularly nervous, maybe, because this goofy 18-year-old guy was sort of stalking her around the terminal. I don’t think he meant anything by it, he was just a dude trying to talk to a pretty girl, you know? But it made her uncomfortable so she glommed onto me, which was fine. At first I thought she was fifteen or sixteen years old, but it turned out she’s a freshman in college. The older I get, the worse I get at guessing the age of people younger than me.

Sarah and I parted company around ten o’clock, when she opted to stay in the airport overnight and I accepted the hotel voucher. I was afraid maybe it was a money thing, and since the vouchers made the rooms so cheap I offered to spring for hers if she needed it – but her flight left early enough that she was afraid of missing it if she left the terminal.

She’s young, and tough, and probably needs no sleep. I am old, and feeble, and I needed the sleep so I met a small tribe of similarly disenfranchised Delta fliers to catch a shuttle down by “door 10.” The tribe consisted of a hilariously hip middle-aged Asian couple on their way to a cruise, a Canadian guy, a hipster newlywed with an armful of flowers, and a very nice fellow with a very thick lisp. We stuck together long enough to (finally) nab the shuttle and score our hotel rooms, and now, it’s time to call it a night.

My next flight leaves at eight in the morning. I’m taking the 6:00 a.m. shuttle back to the airport.

* * * * * *

Sleep. Hah.

The hotel was all right, but there was no way to tune down the heating/ac unit, and it sounded like I was shut in a closet with a jet engine. Likewise, the room above me seemed to have been occupied by a family of nocturnal bowling balls. No, I have no earplugs.

Eh. Whatchgonnado?

I dozed intermittently, gave up around 4:00 a.m., got up, and watched TV. At 5:45 I wandered downstairs and conned the kitchen woman into letting me mooch some orange juice and what turned out to be the world’s saddest excuse for a muffin. Apart from the bag of Doritos I got from the vending machine last night, and a few bites of disgusting airport café hotdog, I haven’t eaten anything since breakfast yesterday.

You’d think I’d be hungry, but I’m not. Mostly, I’m anxious because I just want to get where I’m going. I’ll worry about eating and sleeping when I get there. In order for me to get there, I now have to make (a). a perfectly timed departure to Cincinnati, (b). swing a 23-minute layover there to catch a perfectly timed departure to Atlanta, and then (c). successfully navigate Hartsfield in order to nab a flight to Orlando. Though honestly, if I make it to Atlanta and they tell me I’m stranded, I’ll probably just rent a car and drive the rest of the way.

At 6:00 a.m. the shuttle came, and about fifteen minutes later the tribe was deposited at the airport, where we went our separate ways. Much to my delight, the security line moved swiftly and – lo and behold – my plane is at the gate, even though it doesn’t leave for another hour and a half or so.

Oh God, oh God. Let us get out of here before Seattle’s snowstorm lands here in Salt Lake City, as it is scheduled to do later this morning. And please oh please oh please, let Cincinnati be running smoothly.

* * * * * *

Cincinnati was running smoothly. I made my connection early, with forty-five minutes to spare, and I hopped my flight to Atlanta with something almost akin to optimism; but Atlanta was a problem. My Cincinnati flight ran a few minutes late and I missed the twenty-three minute connection in Hartsfield by two minutes, even though I ran like hell through the airport, shoving little old ladies and small children out of my way as I went.

I nearly cried. They told me to go call the Delta Helpline over at the other end of the terminal, so I dragged my sad self over to the helpline, where I was informed that I’d been rescheduled for another flight, leaving at 9:20 that night—about four hours away. But if I wanted, I could make another call and see if they’d sneak me onto an earlier flight, which wasn’t likely, but hey, you never know.

So I got on the line and reached “Brian” somebody or another, who was super-nice and who told me that no, there were no other flights with any seats whatsoever except, hey, wait a minute … no … no, there’s a flight leaving in twenty minutes from a gate at the other end of the airport—and he’d book me a seat thereupon, because 26 people had just now lost their positions thereupon due to a cancelled flight someplace else. It had literally appeared on his screen while I was on the phone with him.

I told Brian I loved him, slammed down the phone, and ran back the other direction—where I had to take a tram and several escalators to get to my new destination … where I waited in another line for half an hour (with about sixty other people) in order to learn that oh, hey, the plane was leaving late (clearly) and look at that. Brian, the new love of my life, had upgraded me to first class.

Then, once we were all on board, the plane sat at the gate for another hour while the flight crew searched frantically for the purse of a stewardess who’d debarked earlier.

Sadly, I’m not kidding. It was absurd and obscene, but at least I had free food and sodas. I turned down the free drinks, because by this point I’d been awake nearly two days with nothing but the aforementioned airport food and one baggie of cookies, so the slightest mouthful of alcohol would’ve made me pass out.

And finally, after waiting longer to leave the airport than the actual flight time to get there, I arrived in Orlando. My mother and grandma were waiting for me at the airport, and I can honestly say that I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to see them.

[The End for now ]

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* My new term for “writing stuff I plan to post online eventually, yet lacking an internet connection when I compose it.”

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