2/15: You Thought I Was Kidding About Mal Voyage? (Part II)
6:30 p.m.
• So a while back I talked about my fun trip to the airport. Might as well put the finishing touches to this epic adventure.
I was at the Albany airport for a flight to my buddy Ed Rendell’s former stomping ground: Philly. The flight itself wasn’t too bad. However, our “flight attendant” was this fat early twenty-something with greasy hair. Good God, Larry the Cable Guy was right: The Oakridge Boys with titties. Anyway, I didn’t really care because I just read my copy of U.S. Snooze and World Distort. Oh, and every time the flight attendant would go on that intercom thingy he’d be laughing. OK. Now the flight itself was rather uneventful. However, the landing… well…
It’s around 7:15 p.m. when we land. I have a connecting flight at 8:30. No problem. We head over to the dock/terminal/whatever that place is called where we all leave. The pilot tells us that another plane is already there. Uh, OK. I don’t fly enough to know if this is a common practice; I’m sure Smues will set me straight. We then drive over to another dock/terminal/whatever that place is called where we all leave. It’s now 7:40 and the pilot tells us that there’s a plane in front of us and it’s BROKEN DOWN. We now drive back to the first dock/terminal/whatever that place is called where we all leave and the original plane is still there. When we finally got out it was 8.
Well so much for checking out the Philly airport.
The chick sitting next to me on this flight was antsy as hell. Not only did she have to sit next to ME, but also she had a flight to Toronto departing at 8:30. While we each shared our tales of how this nearly hour-long delay might mess with our hopes of further air travel, I did something I normally don’t do. When it was time to leave, I immediately got up to leave. Whether it’s a sporting event, movie or some other social function, I generally just sit and let everybody else leave first. What’s the point of getting up just to wait in line. I’d rather just sit back and relax while everyone else elbows each other in hopes of exiting and being stuck in gridlock. Well not tonight. I got up and dug in my heels, especially when some dumbfuck in front of me went past me to get some overhead luggage and then tried to cut back in front of me. Not tonight.
After we were all herded into the Philly airport, I thought I was in pretty good shape. I had about 20 minutes to go from Gate B to Gate A; with those moving walkways it’s be a walk in the park.
Ten minutes later and NO SIGN OF GATE A I was beginning to doubt my confidence. Thankfully I saw signs of Gate A shortly thereafter and managed to get into my seat at 8:30 sharp. I was never in any real danger of missing my flight because the thing didn’t actually take off until 15-20 minutes later anyway thanks to all the dumbfucks with too-large-for-overhead luggage and other products of the under-class gumming up the works. However, the thought of spending the night in Fast Eddie’s crib downright scares me. I must say though that from what I saw the Philly airport was rather nice. And I’m not even going to make my predictable “But then again I didn’t see any black people” joke – probably because there were a bunch. Oh well. When I travel I always make sure my wallet is properly secured.
The flight to Shittsburgh wasn’t bad, but when I went to get my luggage the question on my mind while waiting on the Philly runway during my Albany jet joyride was answered. There wasn’t enough time to get the baggage from the Albany flight onto the Shittsburgh flight. My favorite part of this came when in the “lost baggage” section with the other poor sods who made the Albany-Shittsburgh connection. We actually developed somewhat of a camaraderie with each other – either that or they were too tired and frustrated to actively avoid me.
I wish I could end this story with some huge payoff, but my bags were delivered to my door the next afternoon. Alas, and I wanted to bitch even more. I just hope that chick who was sitting next to me over the Albany skies had her luggage boarded on time; Toronto is much farther from Philly than my hood.
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