Travel Wars, Episode 6 (Return of the Jetlag)
December 18, 2007
Our saga continues but does not conclude in the very early morning of Sunday, December 16, 2007. After spending a day in hell (a.k.a. airports and airplanes), I spent two days in Princeton, New Jersey involved in a variety of business meetings, software development, Christmas parties, and even voluntary community service. In all, it was a productive, positive, and polite two days. But alas, like all good things, it was destined to come to an end.
Sunday morning around 5:30 AM eastern time, I left my hotel room and caught an elevator to the lobby. In a surprising twist from the previous Thursday’s events, my driver was waiting patiently by the desk. He was 30 minutes early. (He was well on his way to a good tip.) The driver was professional, polite, and actually pretty cool. On the ride to the airport, we struck up a conversation about Philadelphia, about how I’ve driven through the town at least 6 times, but I’ve never physically set food on the ground there. The driver commented that a week earlier, he had spent the day giving a tour of the city to a few businessmen from out of town. Had I known what was in store for me at the airport, I would have asked him to do the same for me.
We got to the airport ahead of schedule, sometime around 6:30 AM, and I headed inside at a good clip. It was cold outside, and I wanted to get through security with enough time to have a semi-relaxed breakfast near my departure gate. I was flying through Chicago, and I expected very little time on the ground there; it was likely I wouldn’t get a chance to eat lunch. As it ends up, I had far, far more time than I could have ever guessed.
Upon reaching the ticket counter, a large man of some importance walked up and down the back of the counter shouting, “All flights to Chicago are canceled due to snow.”
“Awesome. And so it begins again,” I thought.
I checked with both United (the carrier I was scheduled to fly with), a few of the other carriers, and then finally the corporate travel agency. They all said the same thing. There were no other flights to Chicago save one: a United flight departing Philadelphia at 4:35 PM. “Well, I guess I have about 10 hours to do a little writing or coding,” I thought, trying to stay positive.
I booked myself a ticket on the 4:35 PM flight; this one was going through Denver. Then I tried to check my luggage but was rejected. According to United, passengers aren’t allowed to check their luggage more than 4 hours prior to scheduled departure. Worst yet, all the restaurants, Internet hot spots, and various fancy amenities like chairs were all on the other side of the security check-point.
Fortunately, my suitcase is almost (although annoying not quite) thick enough to double as a make-shift chair. I fashioned myself a nook near the windows opposite the ticket counter, far enough away from the foot traffic to be left alone but with a few feet of buffer from the windows that were leaking cold into the terminal similar to how Niagara Falls leaks water into the Atlantic. I pulled out a good book and proceeded to pass the time.
After several chapters, it was mid-day, and I was allowed to check my chair... er... I mean luggage. Now I was off to TSA gauntlet. Passing security was no more painless than what I had experienced in Seattle, so I was in a pretty good mood when I reached my departure gate with about three hours of time left. I found a restaurant and ordered some food, a Philly cheese steak. It was yummy and all, but I still don’t understand what all the fuss is about. Of course, this was at an airport restaurant, not Gino’s. Perhaps that makes all the difference.
Then I discovered something that made me depressed. I inadvertently sat along a row of windows that looked back on the section of the airport where I had spent the previous six or seven hours. I noted with some sadness that in that time, I had traveled about 100 yards.
After eating, I plopped in a real chair (such luxury) and tried to get online. The good news was there was free wifi. The bad news was that about 40% of the other would-be passengers in the terminal had already discovered the free wifi. At one point, for about 20 minutes, I was able to write a few emails, get on my private IRC server, and even SSH to a few servers. But alas, it was not to last; and quickly I found myself taking my frustrations out on my keyboard.
Right on time, a nice looking United airplane parked at the gate. A steady steam of passengers exited the plane while I packed my laptop and prepared to stand in line yet again. Boarding was uneventful, but when I got to my seat, I found myself sandwiched between two nice but large people in a space that must have been designed for my 6-year-old son. “It’s only a three-hour flight,” I thought. “Suck it up.”
Everyone got seated quickly, and we appeared to be ready to depart. I sat up a bit and was able to look up the plane, through first-class, through the open cockpit door, and into the cockpit. But I wasn’t greeted with the typical comforting sight of a thousand little yellow and blue LEDs indicating overall warm fuzzy feelings about the aircraft. Instead, I saw darkness.
About 15 minutes later, the head flight attendant got on the speaker: “Folks, our pilots aren’t here yet. They’re flying in from San Diego. We expect them to land fairly soon. We’ll keep you informed of their progress.” Worse yet, things were starting to heat up. I had on no coat, but I was starting to sweat. I twisted on the air above me, but only the weakest of ventilation occurred.
There was a small part of me that thought, “Aside from those thousand little yellow and blue LEDs, it’s still just stick and rudder. I can do this.”
About another 15 minutes later, I spotted two pilot-looking types walk into the airplane and head into the cockpit. A couple minutes later, LEDs were glowing and the passenger AC system blasted an Artic ice wind. Relief at least.
The flight, like all the flights in this saga, was uneventful. We landed and taxied to the gate. We were pretty late, but the flight attendants assured us that we would make our connections. I left the aircraft and jogged to my departure gate. I was the second to last person to get on board.
The rest of the saga played out without much incident. When I got home, it was around 2:00 AM on Monday, making it almost 24-hours of “traveling.”
