The economy had made my annual trip to Las Vegas a bit of a hassle. My two flights over there had no meal service, even though one of them flew through noon in four different time zones. The Las Vegas Hilton, where I stayed last year, had doubled their rates, so I had to stay over at the Riviera, which was fifty bucks a night cheaper but a mile further away. The Riviera charged a surprise $3.00 a day for electricity, in addition to the usual $10.87 for an eighteen second phone call.
My flight home had an hour and a half stopover in Atlanta. Delta's two traffic hubs are in Cincinnati and Atlanta. I dare you to try going cross-country on Delta without hitting either of those airports. I had never been to Georgia before, so I was hoping I'd get a decent experience out of it. Maybe I could find a restaurant and get some conversation going with locals. There's time for a decent meal in an hour and a half (although not necessarily the food for it, since I'd still be in the airport).
My cab driver got me to the airport at 8:10. The plane's takeoff time was 8:45. Cutting it a bit tight, but it'd just mean I'd have less sitting around time in the airport. I had seven hours of it coming home last year: I've had enough for a whole retirement home of Vegas visitors. The line was made enjoyable by a Middle Eastern couple with a cute toddler who was running around with his toy cars.
Each of my two bags weighed about fifty pounds. They were loaded with private label supplies I got from local west coast chains. I could just send them back Fed Ex, but since I had mostly empty luggage, I figured I could carry them on and save the company forty bucks or so. At least I didn't have the juice and beverage stories to buy for this time: all those half gallons of apple juice nearly ripped my arms off. This time, it was just household cleaners and saline solution and maple syrup and spaghetti sauce, most of which were in glass bottles, which added up to about an ounce less.
A sign in line said I had to be at my plane ten minutes before takeoff. A sign further up in the line said I had to be at my place fifteen minutes before takeoff. That must have been new legislation passed while I shuffled twelve feet. I got to the counter with twenty-five minutes until takeoff. Phew, made it.
"You missed the plane," the woman told me.
"I can still make it!" The plane wasn't set to depart for twenty-five minutes.
"No you can't. You were supposed to get here two hours early." I did that the last time I flew, and I sat in the terminal for an hour forty-five. By my estimate, I still had ten minutes of waiting time for this flight. The plane was sitting in the gate, and they weren't letting me on it.
I had two options for getting home. One was wait in Vegas on standby for a Cincinnati flight, then transfer to a Newark flight. That wouldn't cost anything extra. The other was a three pronged flight from Vegas to L.A., L.A. to Atlanta, and Atlanta to Newark. That was a guaranteed seat on all the planes, but it'd be $100 extra for ticket processing.
I paused when I thought about Los Angeles. I'd never been anywhere in California before. I had no expectations of going there today. There was plenty to do there, and I'd only get half an hour in an airport. That's the sum total of my Arizona experience, but I was stretching pretty hard to find something to get excited about in Arizona. I'd be downright angry if that half an hour was also my California experience.
It was the $100 that made the difference. I didn't want the company to pony up $100 because I was foolish enough to get to an airport thirty-five minutes early. I picked the Cincinnati route. I'd see California another day. And Georgia. No new states for me today.
All standby luggage gets a search, so I moved to the side of the counter where security was. The Middle Eastern couple was getting everything they owned checked for bombs and anthrax. Security wiped my bag handle, and then my hands. If they started unpacking my crammed bags, I'd be here all day. The cookies alone would set off alarms. I had a two pound tin of Smith's Food and Drug Premium Biscuits, with a decorative piece of paper around it. It was giant metal box I was going to warn people to be fragile with (since I don't want the paper ripped). You might as well pistol whip me now and save five minutes. But they didn't even touch a zipper on my bag: the Middle Eastern toddler was a bigger threat in security's eyes.
Vegas is a growing city with a mostly tourist economy, so the airport has spread like an unchecked mole. My destination, Terminal D, wasn't even connected to the other terminals: I had to take a tram ride a mile or two away to reach it. And the tram entrance is at least half a mile away from the main entrance. And the metal detector line was the longest I've ever seen. That counter woman was right about twenty-five minutes not being enough time to reach the damn gate.
I wasn't going to lug the quantum singularity of my carry-on back through the terminal to get breakfast, so I hit the restaurants as soon as I reached them. The only breakfast place was Cinnabon, so I asked for a cinnamon bun and an orange juice, which would be over six dollars. Cinnabon was out of cinnamon buns, however. "Eight minutes, can you wait?" Welcome to my life, cashier. I walked over to the Burger King and got a Croissandwich meal for a buck less.
Terminal D was so noisy, it'd make Helen Keller's ears bleed. Slot machines in the center of the terminal were clanging and beeping. Some ear-piercing alarm went off every five minutes, and stuck around for ten minutes a shot. Prerecorded "No smoking" announcements went off every ten minutes on the ones. A constant barrage of gate changes and eight different notifications for each flight were broadcast, usually overlapping with the "No smoking" guy. And every person in the airport had a cell phone.
I moved to an empty section of seats by an unused gate, close to the alarm but a good ten feet from everyone else. Compared to the cacophony, a solitary suicide-mulling noise was a downright pleasure. One of the overlapping messages I was now drowning out said that a flight had been rerouted to the exact empty gate I was sitting in front of. Within forty seconds, people were now sitting to the left, right, and across from me, two people were standing in the aisle by me, the seats on the other side of me were filled by people talking loudly in some Asian language, and the woman to the right of me was screaming into her cell phone about how much noise this airport had. I was expecting a tiny cloud to start raining just on my head.
After three hours, the Cincinnati flight began boarding. It was completely full, but all I needed was one guy who showed up thirty-five minutes early for it, and I could take his seat. If not, then I was screwed. The L.A. flight had already left, and I'd probably have another couple hours for another Cincinnati standby. Maybe I should have just spent the money for the L.A. route. It wasn't my money, after all. I got lucky, however, and got a last minute Cincinnati seat. Its original owner was probably at the front counter right now. Luck is a zero sum game in Vegas.
As I hoisted my bag to stuff in the overhead compartment, it felt wet. I smelled my hands: window cleaner. Something ruptured in my bag. And I had just run out of time to check it out. I stuffed the wet bag in the compartment, and hoped the leak wasn't serious.
Delta gave free headphone usage (in this economy, it's like sharing suntan lotion on a desert island) but not a free movie. Delta showed a collection of cable programming and commercials. The worst was a French hidden video show whose 'wacky' stunts including tripping people as they stepped off elevators.
My food for the flight was a 0.5 ounce bag of pretzels and half a can of soda. I can understand how chopping out meals saves airlines money, but why not give me the whole damn can? The flight attendants are just putting them back on their carts half full. Maybe they're afraid we'll fill up their bathrooms with excess fluids. I'd say I was angry enough to spit, but I was too dehydrated to do so.
I would now like to personally thank Jeff Long, author of the Descent, for writing a book that made both the Vegas wait and the Cincinnati flight tolerable. I finished it on the flight, started False Memory, a Dean Koontz book. I need to learn to not read Dean Koontz. Twice now the same thing's happened. I start a book, realize in thirty pages what the plot twist the whole book hinges on is, and then have to wade through 500 more pages to get to it. 700, in the case of False Memory. It's not that I'm clever, it's that the books aren't. I'm almost glad False Memory got soaked in window cleaner.
Three hours later (six, with time zone hopscotching) we touched down in Cincinnati. I was in the rear of the airplane, so I had to stand for ten minutes with my leaky bag before getting a chance to leave. I found the arrivals/departures screen and put down the bag. I was going to dig through the bag and find how the cleaner sprung a leak. Then I'd have some food, and get ready for the second flight. My desire to do something Ohio-esque wasn't there, since the Cincinnati airport is technically across the river in Kentucky, and I've already been to Kentucky. I also wanted to hit an ATM, since I might not have enough cash to pay for my car's long term parking. Providing my plane wasn't leaving in twenty-five minutes, I'd have time to do it all. I checked the board, and my plane was leaving in twenty minutes.
Whoever schedules which Delta gates in Cincinnati get which flights should be drawn and quartered. I had to run the full distance down B terminal, down a four-story escalator, across a mile of underground passage, up a second four-story escalator, and halfway across A terminal to reach my gate. The only thing lightening my load was the evaporating fumes from the window cleaner.
The combination of sprinting and ammonia had temporarily erased the word 'standby' from my memory when I reached the counter. "I'm on, uh, I'm on changeover, or, uh, pickup, uh..." I flipped through my huge bundle of tickets, hotel confirmations, ticket stubs from Tuesday, and two or three envelopes that wouldn't close. I dropped them all on the counter, and let the flight attendant pick out what she needed. I might actually be booked as a regular passenger on this flight, as far as I knew.
"Don't worry, you're on the flight," the woman reassured me. "You can calm down, you're on it." The Newark flight was only half full, so I could stuff my bag overhead without fear of dissolving adjoining luggage. If I knew we'd still be sitting on the ground twenty minutes later, I would have checked my bag for leaks them. As it was, I just let the sweat evaporate off me.
My food for this flight was another half can of soda and some snack mix. The snack mix was a whole 0.9 ounces: I had shifted from eating like an Ethiopian to eating like a Somali. Add in the chemicals on my hands from the window cleaner, and I was having a Third World buffet.
We were scheduled to land at 8:20, but got held up to 9:00 because of massive fog in Newark. This was still putting me in an hour before my L.A. route, which would have landed a little after 10:00 P.M. I guess it pays to save the company money. Cheap bastard victory #1.
Once in Newark, I finally dug out the window cleaner from my bag, six hours after I noticed the leak. The bottom on the spray bottle had a dent in it bubbling air through the bottle. About 25% was missing. Luckily everything else in the bag was so heavily packaged a nuclear blast couldn't affect them. I took the bottle in the bathroom and dumped it. The faucets were operated by malfunctioning sensor technology, so it took several minutes and several percussive therapy applications to get my hands clean.
My garment bag was probably in Honolulu by this point. I barely made it to Cincinnati and Newark with the bag in my hand. I doubt an FBI surveillance team could have trailed me. I went to the luggage carousel anyway, to participate in the charade. Fifteen minutes of standing, then I'd be able to claim my bag missing. My luggage made it through, however. With the L.A-Atlanta route, the extra plane might have caused a luggage hiccup. Cheap bastard victory #2.
I was starving, and no longer had any reason to stay at the airport. I could questionably snag a free meal there and call it a business expense. If my luggage didn't immediately show up, that's exactly what I would have done. But now that I had both weighty bags in hand, that walk up to a restaurant was a bit pointless. But still questionably free. I decided to skip it.
I lucked into a bus to long term parking immediately. Might as well rush home to eat. As the bus pulled out, I remembered I needed cash for parking. OK, money check. I had $31 in cash, and long term parking was eight bucks a day. That should be $32, which I could just cover with some quarters in my pocket. If I had bought that 'free' meal, I would have been stuck. Cheap bastard victory #3.
I got dropped off close to my car, and drove to the exit booth. I'd just be able to squeeze through here, assuming there as no electricity surcharge. I passed my punch card to the attendant. "Thirty two," she said. Just as predicted.
"Do you take credit cards?"
"Yeah." Damn; I was almost hoping self-sacrifice was the only way to get out of the parking lot. No sense losing all my cash, so I paid with a Visa.
The cheap bastard logic was just downgraded to two victories, with that second one being a stretch. So all I really did was save my company $100 and get into Newark an hour early. Come to think of it, an extra hour in Newark's can't qualify as a victory in anyone's book.
At least the glass bottles in my bag are shiny now.