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In the beginning, everything was going well. I woke up early and got half my work done. I left home at 11:30 so that I could meet my dad downtown. He was going to drop me off at the airport during his lunch hour, which meant that I'd be at the airport before 1. I wasn't crazy about the idea, but that was my only option.
I checked in at the airport just fine and even got a little something for my girl from Guinea. I was still walking around with $5 Canadian from my trip a month earlier to Montreal, and I knew it was only worth about $3 US, but I decided to exchange it anyway. Unfortunately, the exchange place charged a $2 service fee, so I only got $1. At that point though, I just didn't care-I had finally gotten rid of the last of my Canadian money.
My ticket said that we were to start boarding the plane at 3:40, so I used the remaining 2 hours of free time to get the rest of my work done. When 3:30 rolled around and there was no plane in sight, I started to get a little worried, but not worried enough to ask what was going on. I figured I was okay because I had almost an hour groundtime in Philly, so I just sat in my chair and grooved to the Verve Pipe.
Eventually, the plane rolled in and we were only waiting about 10-15 minutes before taking off. Since the flight was only 45 minutes long, I was hoping to get a quick bite to eat before my connection left in Philly (cookies and a quarter loaf of garlic bread for breakfast just doesn't fill me up like it used to).
Once we landed in Philadelphia, I still had a half hour ground time before my boarding call. Then the Travel Gods struck again. My heart (and subsequently stomech) sank when then captain announced that we had no gate to go to. Convinced that I would just have to make do with airline pretzels for dinner, I calmly sat through the 15-20 minute wait for a gate. People were very nice and let those of us with connections to leave first, since I now only had about 10 minutes until my other flight started boarding.
I speedwalked the fair distance to my gate, only to find that it was running at least an hour behind. My stomech rejoiced at this fact and ceased its complaining after I downed (an expensive) Philly cheesesteak. I called my friends at school to let them know that I was now stuck in Philly (as opposed to being stuck at home), and they lamented the cruelty of the Travel Gods with me.
When I returned from dinner and calling people, I was a bit surprised to find the gate where I was scheduled to leave from to be completely abandoned. Being the fatalist that I am, I immediately feared that my flight had left without me and that I must have missed the boarding calls while eating. I ran to the gate counter next door and asked what was going on. Much to my relief, the Lady at the Counter told me that they had just switched to a few gates down.
I found my new gate without any problems, and sat down, Verve Pipe cd blasting. They proceeded to play musical gates with us a bit more, but after about two hours, our plane finally landed and found the gate. When we got on the plane, we were told that we had about a half hour wait for our turn to takeoff. In the meantime, I had a nice chat with a senior from Harvard and another student from MIT. We all agreed that the airline industry sucked, and we should at least be given and extra bag of pretzels or something.
Well, by the time we finally landed in Beantown and I got my luggage onto the T and eventually into my dorm room, it was about midnight. All and all, it was a decent first Thanksgiving away from home; my planes didn't crash, and in the grand scheme of things, getting home about 30 hours late isn't all that bad.
My flights for Christmas break? Direct.
©2003By M.E. It's ok to look, but just don't touch. Or steal for that matter.
