Old stuff: The Airplane Disaster

This is my first ever “terrible business trip” experience, and as such I am going to begin recording my thoughts, fears, and concerns. Call it a tribute to the SportsGuy. I will begin as I awoke this morning, at local time 6:55, to once again sally forth to the Huston Airport. I’m not sure exactly when my journey officially kicked off, but lets assume conservative and say its when I arrived at the check in Desk in NYC La Guardia Airport. The time then was 10:00 AM, Monday the 16th. of October. We pick up the story early in the morning of Tuesday the 17^th.

Hour 20: I awake in my Hotel room after a fitful sleep. Apparently I’m nervous about making the plane, because I have awoken four times during the night. This is very unusual for me. I confess to having a strong desire to stay in bed, and not even make an effort to make the 10:45am flight to Lubbock, my final destination. .

Hour 20.30: I met a man just now on the train taking me from terminal C to terminal B. He’s on hour 36, and is trying to get to his sisters wedding in Tampa. Remember, it could always be worse! I feel a strange camaraderie with this man. I will certainly never see him again.

Hour 21: This desire to stay in bed that I referred to before. It was actually brilliant foresight. After hitting every line perfectly and arriving at the Huston airport once again (I have now removed my shoes three times, been patted up and down once… no serious invasive searches yet) I discover that the flight that I was on standby for has been canceled. The next flight will be at 2:15 this afternoon. I am, needless to say, still very much on standby. The woman behind the counter who gave me this information was surprised that I was at all upset. She said: “oh, I thought you already knew all about that”. The frustrating thing is that I DID know, and should have stayed in bed. However, in line, I struck up a conversation with a nice couple who were clearly suffering from sleep deprivation. They were on hour 26 of their journey to Oklahoma City. The husband had gotten a ticket on the next flight, (at 11AM) but his wife had been consigned to standby. This was creating some awkwardness in their interactions. He was claiming that he would, of course, wait for her and wouldn’t take the flight, but it didn’t sound like she believed him.

Hour 22: they keep making announcements that if you are caught making “inappropriate” jokes or comments about security, you could be arrested. The woman seems very friendly over the intercom though, so I have trouble believing that she will go through with it. I am considering making as many such jokes as loudly as possible, just because I can’t really face the reality of sitting here for another large number of hours. Also, wouldn’t it be interesting to see the inner workings of airport security?

I am also becoming friends with a suicidal looking woman with a five year old. The five year old is asleep now, which is nice, because his mother looks like she’s about to snap. She has the skin coloring and personal aroma of someone who has been up all night drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes to stay awake. Also, at this point, I just noticed that I am starting to smell bad (my cloths are somewhere between here and Lubbock, It’s unclear if I will ever see them again). I hope that my new found friends don’t hold it against me, but the stench of stale tobacco on her clothing makes me feel that I’m still ok.

Hour 23: The news is reporting that 10 inch’s of rain was dumped on the area last night. There have been four deaths, and a whole horde of lost livestock in the flooding. I’m starting to hate the airlines marginally less, and the general travel gods marginally more.

I’m going to go forage for sustenance and see if there is a way to get to a bus stop and check times and things. Any flight we could take at this point would almost definitely crash anyway.

Hour 23.09 AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. But the breakfast burrito was yummy.

Hour 23.30: I’ve noticed a lot of people on cell phones telling the world their stories. I don’t think anyone has flown into or out of this airport in the last day. (the bus stop idea was a failure. No one here knows anything, and I am afraid to leave security areas because I don’t want to have to come back in.)

I have found a group of like minded Lubbock bound people, and I have to say, the crew feels mutinous. There are a large number of us Lubbock bound folk at this point, and there are talks of a second flight this afternoon to accommodate all the standby people. We are all bonding together in our upset-ness, huddling around the few of us with laptops. So far, two people have sent and received emails from my machine, and one person read about the Bears game last night. (Editors note: Bears Defense with a huge comeback win over Arizona to move to 6-0) We have also discovered that the website for the Airport is marginally more useful and informed then the people in the Airport themselves, and are thus checking it regularly for information that doesn’t seem to have filtered down to the peons at the desks.

The woman with her five year old went off on a wild goose chase for a flight that might get them closer to where they want to be. I wish them well, but I don’t have a lot of hope for their success.

Hour 24: I just realized that I have been calculating the time of my journey all wrong. It became an hour earlier when I arrived here. Thus, I should have been adding an hour to my total instead of subtracting it. If i started at 10am EST, and it 11am Central time now, then my new hour clock to this point is 26, not 24. However, Its only been a little more then a half hour since my last comment.

Hour 26: My new found power of the internet played me for a fool! There was a flight listed for Lubbock in Terminal A, and I raced over to see if I could get on it. Of course, as any savvy business traveler knows, listing flights in other terminals is simply a way to disperse the angry mo waiting at a gate for a flight they might not get on. I have to say, I took the bait. Hook line and sinker. Of course it was a red herring, and of course no one would have heard of it in the new terminal, more the fool I for believing in easy solutions! However, I have to say that I now have a pretty good concept of the layout of the Huston Airport. I have now visited, in no particular order, Terminals A, B, C and E, and a Sub terminal of B that really looks like a third world country.

27.45: The Walls of this place are starting to close in! I have finished my book, and my Ipod is dying. All of my plugs and cords are in the Luggage which is somewhere between here and my desired destination. No one at the baggage claim can tell me where, exactly, that is, but they assure me that it will be there waiting for me when I get off. I am starting to become claustrophobic. Long halls with neon lights are glaring down on my exposed head and scrambling my brain. I need a tinfoil helmet! There are people camping out all around me, toys and food spread out in the hall like a refugee camp. The larger piles are people sleeping under thin airport issued blankets. I don’t know if I’m going to make it.

In a desperate bid to maintain my own sanity, as my cell phone fades into oblivion and starts making regular beeping noises (yes, the cell phone charger is in the bag too…) I have purchased “the plot against America” By Philip Roth. I’m excited. This could have a slight redemption as an event if this is A) a good book, and B) wastes some time.

Sometime around hour 28: So here I am, peacefully reading my book, when suddenly a woman near me faints. Like, a scary faint, complete collapse, sagging against the wall and then head hitting the floor pretty hard. Humor of my own situation aside, this shit was scary. Then she started having a seizure. I’m always amazed at how people don’t know what to do, and as a result, tell other people to do things but wont do anything themselves. Everyone was just paralyzed with fear for a while. I mean, I don’t know what to do either, but turning her on her side, and making sure that she had something soft under her head seem like safe enough steps. She was frothing at the mouth a bit, and threw up a little, so we got her a paper towel, and some woman donated her airplane pillow (sagely stolen from a previous flight!). We made her as comfortable as possible, but the paramedics took 20 minutes to get there, and the airplane staff did literally nothing more then cordon off the area. Well, that’s not fair. One woman in the crew came over and gave us an ice pack, and then a little while later told us we could leave the woman and she would wait with her while the paramedics arrived. The woman (about 35, black woman in a nice business suit) was trying to talk for a while, but now she’s just laying there looking sort of freaked out. Everyone, is, of course, stopping to gawk at her. Shitty. I will now resume my humorous account of these events.

Hour 28.09: I know I promise to be funny again, but the paramedics just got here. It took them the entire time I was trying to help my fellow refugees help this woman having a seizure, and THEN the entire time it took me to write about it, and THEN 5 minutes. I don’t know why, but I really assumed that the response times in an airport would be better then that. but it was more then 25 minutes from faint to response. You get that sort of time in Nelson County. Or a third world country.

Hour 28.30: She was one of us, the woman who had a seizure, but she has now essentially been forgotten. We all already moved on. It has been announced that there are 17 people on standby for a few slots on the plane, and tension is building as we approach the time for the standby flight. People who, mere hours ago, were my friends, are now glowering at me and keeping their children close. Already, the camaraderie that the hours have fostered is beginning to disintegrate. Eye contact that used to result in a shared smile and an eye roll is now a grim frown and a quick look away. I am pulling my things closer to me, because these people look like the untrustworthy sorts who would rob you blind or take your designated seat at a moments notice.

Hour 28.45: It will not be a lottery! Standby is apparently done by when you originally checked into the system! The fact that I am closing in on hour 29 can only help me at this point. There can be NO way that the 16 other people have all been traveling for as long as I have… Can there? I am excited for my success. Lubbock appears to be within my grasp. I confess, at this point, that the actual arrival in Lubbock Texas can’t help but disappoint me, but at this point I will still hold it up as a Golden ideal, a Shangri-La of beautiful women, cheap 36 ounce stakes, and free flowing libations.

I’m going to die here in this airport, aren’t I?

Hour 29.30: I met a man named mike, who is waiting to go on a flight to Baton Rouge. He is the angriest man I have ever met. However, he made the list for the Standby on Baton Rouge, and his parting words sounded more like an Oath: I will never make a connection here in this city again. May Texas burn in hell. I swear to god he said that.

Hour 30: I agree with Mike. I’m never flying Continental EVER again. I arrived yesterday at 2:pm and got put on a flight for Wednesday. Now, explain to me how multiple people who arrived today are booked on the 6 and 9pm flights today? HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN?? Should I, at very least, have a chance to be booked before the people who were bumped off flights after me?

Standby was a tad disappointing. No one got on off the standby list. No one. Now, there are literally 8 flights between the one I missed and the one I am booked on. Now, the fact that three of them are canceled is one thing, but that doesn’t mean that people who arrived in this morning should be prioritized ahead of me. This does not make sense. I don’t know what to do. I might be too angry to write about this now. I’m going to make a little hell.

Hour 31: It’s a sad referendum on our current travel system that it takes someone going and really making a stink to get you on a plane. I spent 24 hours being kind, friendly, and generally easy going, laughing with people, hoping to ingratiate myself with them, etc. Eventually, I think I was a combination of that leg work and that went along with me throwing a hissy, but the end result was that I’m going to be on a plane tonight. It starts boarding at 6. And it’s nearly 4 now. So I should hit into Lubbock almost exactly at hour 36. Suck it Adam.

So, it turns out that plane flights don’t have Wifi. Same with the entire City of Lubbock. City is being generous. But whatever. So I had to wait a few days to post my completed, transcribed journal that I took by hand for end of the trip. It seems only appropriate that these last 7 hours would be written by hand. In my own blood.

Hour 32: I have temporarily re-gained my sense of humor about the experience and the life lessons learned thus far. Just had dinner with a large guy who used to play lineman for the Ohio State Buckeyes. We commiserated about the sad state of football, American Air travel, and the general malaise of Kids these Days. It was awesome. I had three beers. Needless to say, the impending doom and disappointment of my 6 o’clock flight is going to be all the more devastating because of this.

Hour 33.5: in waiting for the flight to arrive, a strange mechanical human being approaches me and strikes up a conversation. And by conversation, I mean tells me his life story while occasionally asking me for input on how I think his life is going. This man apparently moved from his life in rural Pennsylvania working as an insurance agent down to Florida to be with his girlfriend. She thanked him by running out on him two months later and he was left high and dry in Florida with out a whole lot of a network. Something about the way this man was talking made me think that the girl might not have invited him to Florida as much as she moved to Florida to escape him, but he never picked up on the signals. Anyway, the really crazy part of the story is that he then spent the last 6 months, post breakup, trying really hard to become a TV anchor. For a news station. He told me he even had a demo tape up on you tube. I’m going to track it down and se if it’s any good, (editors note: Nope) but this feller was into talking. He was one of those that tried to strike up a conversation with everyone he sat near, and was clearly just a little too innocent for this world. If people were joking with him, he sought clarification and reassurance before laughing. Strange human being, who none-the-less seems destined for a job as an extremely sincere local news anchor. His eyes were set further back into his head then any man I’ve ever seen.

Hour 34: Someone just offered me $200 cash for my ticket to Lubbock. I almost accepted. But then I really would die here, cause I would never get on another plane again.

Hour 34.5: I am through the gate, onto a bus, and finally, finally, finally on a plane. The best part is that the four amigos that I have been with since 9 am this morning all made it onto the flight. We have the back four seats of a very small plane. Then, someone comes on and says that they let one too many of us on, and that they are going to read a name and that person has to get off. Dark looks ensue. Promises of bloodshed and camaraderie are muttered under our breaths as the time for the elimination grows near. God help the woman if she calls one of our names!

The tension is broken when someone near the front vomits on the Stewardesses shoes. No joke. Just threw up on the floor. Hurray! He’s the one who’s going to get booted off the plane! There s much rejoicing until we realize that someone just threw up on our plane.

Hour 35: They are still cleaning the plane.

Hour 35.15: Don’t worry. The time it took to clean the plane means we missed our spot in line to take off. I knew it was too good to be true. We have started playing poker for pennies in the back of the plane. One girl, the not hot one, suggests strip poker. The hot one laughs and is all about it. Redemption at last? No, she chickens out when push comes to shove. Still, at least this part of the “flight” is amusing.

Hour 35.45: After a beautiful sunset, there are some squawks about getting underway. I have even fastened my seatbelt once or twice, but its mostly for show. We at the back of the plane are having a fine old time. We have made friends with the stewardess, and after hearing our tales of woe, she opened up the Jim Beam and coke. We are buying the little individual shots in a bottle for a dollar a piece. The other guy from the amigos has convinced her that continental airlines owe us the discount. She is a very friendly woman. She is wearing cowboy boots and wants to know if we want to go out for dinner when we get to Lubbock. IF we get to Lubbock.

Hour 36.15: We have gotten the all clear from air traffic, and turned the back of the plane into a party. Everything is coming up roses! And, we are finally off the ground. Lubbock or bust, that’s our motto. I have just learned that I am flying to the home town of Buddy Holly. Who died in an air crash. This can not be construed as a good sign.

Hour 38: We are nearly to Lubbock. The booze and the long day made a nap necessary. I think im in love with one of the girls (the hot one). But im also aware that its probably just because we have gone through a traumatic experience together. Like Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves from speed.

Hour 38.09: We are touching down in Lubbock. I’m not dead! I am as surprised as you.

Hour 38.35: After getting off the plane, I realize my luggage is gone. Hmmmmm. It was supposed to be here.

Hour 39: After a little search and rescue, I have my bags in tow. I say farewell to the amigos. We all promise to stay in touch. Numbers are exchanged. It becomes clear that the woman I am in love with is being picked up by her fiancé. I am crushed as I head to my rental car. As I leave the airport, the live journal must come to an end. That is the way of the world. The journey began nearly 2 days ago, but it is only airport to airport, so we will cease now. Thank god.