Air Travel Fun: Part 3

This is the third and final installment in our air travel story. It needs some serious editing, but we'll do that later.

Sadly, there’s nothing you can do at this point to get to the airport any earlier. The shuttle runs every half hour, and it’s about 7:15 when that lightning bolt of a realization hits you. So you get on your shuttle and take the short ride to the airport, irritably listening to some woman in the back seat from New York blatantly make up things about the day’s news that weren’t reported anywhere other than in her head. It does not make the ride better.

At the airport, you get in line for the ticket counter, while the Girl tries to check you in at the self-service kiosk. While waiting, you notice lots of signs telling you to make sure you put liquids and gels in your checked bags because they aren’t allowed past the security checkpoint. Those signs don’t really apply to you, though, as you didn’t have your checked bags to put things in. The airline likes to keep those when you’re stranded overnight. The Girl comes back to join you in line because, while the kiosk told her that you were successfully checked in, it didn’t actually give you boarding passes. When you get to the counter, you ask, “Is there any way we’re going to make that 9:00 flight?” It’s about 7:50 AM at this point. The nice but stressed woman behind the counter grimaces and says, “The security lines are pretty long. But you might make it.” You ask when the next flight to the Bay are is, only to find out that there is one to SFO (rather than OAK) at 2:00 PM, but then nothing until 6:45 PM. You try to get her to go ahead and rebook you, but she won’t do it. You tell the Girl as you trudge off to find the end of the security line that you would much rather take that 2:00 flight than have to wait until 6 or 7 that night. The weather forecast said thunderstorms are possible today, and they’re likely to come in the afternoon/evening if they come at all. It’s out of your hands, though, and you just start hoping that you’ll make your 9:00 AM flight.

The security line is something to behold. It starts near the ticket counters and wraps all the way around the terminal. You are positively astounded by it, and you can imagine missing every flight that day waiting in line, then having to repeat the hotel process tonight. It does seem like the line is moving pretty steadily, though. You never get to a point where you’re just standing around, and that kind of surprises you. As you approach a door to the terminal, the line throws you its first curve. It takes a left turn outside the terminal, does a long, flattened horseshoe kind of thing and returns inside the terminal. You wonder how many doors are between you and the security checkpoint. You optimistically bet the Girl that you will get through security at 9:10. She says not until 10:00. She points out that, even if you did make it by 9:10, your flight would be gone. You argue that, with these long lines, the airlines almost have to delay flights, as they are flying fewer flights this summer, with most of them filled near capacity, and there just isn’t anyplace to put displaced travelers. So it would be in their best interest not to leave people behind.

The security line goes outside another door, doing its flattened horseshoe thing again. These trips outside are just a knee to the groin in addition to a punch in the face. It’s not cool in Atlanta in August, and you’re schvitzing a good amount by the time you get back inside. You also start to think that your carry-on computer bag wasn’t really packed with this particular situation in mind, and it’s getting pretty heavy. Because the line is moving pretty quickly, it has a bit of a slinky quality about it, and there are many small breaks in the line. Along the way, about three people approach you looking around a bit, obviously thinking the little break in the line behind you is the end. You pityingly tell them that the line is a bit farther back, pointing out the people behind you, knowing that these would-be travelers are going to be pretty bummed by the time they work their way all the way to the back of the line. This security line, after going outside twice, wraps in snakelike fashion through all the baggage claims, around a corner near the MARTA entrance, then forks into at least 5 different lines that go through the middle of a mall area, then through a maze of stretchy extenda-barricade lines to finally dump people out at the security checkpoint. At the corner near the MARTA entrance (at least you think that’s what it is), the slinky effect of the line messes up some people in front of you. Instead of making a hard right turn, about 10 -15 people continue straight through the door to the MARTA. You can’t help but wonder how those people will get back in line as you spring back toward the next part of the slinky.

At this point, some airport employees are toting around big trash cans and advising people to make sure they get rid of all their liquids, gels, etc. The Girl bites the bullet and dumps half of her toiletries bag, discarding things like perfume, nail polish, hair gel, hair straightener gel, toothpaste, makeup, deodorant, and a bunch of other stuff. You reckon she tosses somewhere between $50 and $100 worth of stuff. It’s a total bummer, too, as she didn’t really have the option of putting it in her checked bags, as she didn’t have it during the overnight flight delay. Understandably, tossing all those things does not make her happy. The woman behind you tries to get the Girl to give her the deodorant. Very strange. You don’t know what to make of that at all. You can’t help but identify with Dante from Clerks, thinking repeatedly, “I’m not even supposed to be here today!” Some airport guy comes by and officiously peers into the Girl’s half-empty toiletries bag and tells her, “Yeah, that’s all going to have to go.” Foolish man. She’s dealt with a lot in the last few minutes, and she already got rid of the bad stuff, and she doesn’t want any shit from some random guy right now. “Really?!” she asks. “You think I need to throw my toothbrush away?!” The implication was that the toothbrush was about the only thing left in there and, if it had to be disposed of, it was likely to be deposited at an uncomfortable angle in one of his bodily orifices. “No. That’s OK,” he replies meekly and disappears to pester some other would-be travelers.

That ordeal over with, you ooze through a central hall with restaurants, shops, and a post office. You think that maybe you could have shipped the Girl’s contraband home. You decide it’s best not to mention that idea, on account of her still having that toothbrush. After getting through this hall, you go into the extenda-barricade maze and start cruising through as the people in the other parts of the maze watch enviously. More security inspection lines have apparently been opened, and you go through quickly, as one TSA employee softly tells the others, “Get ‘em through, get ‘em through.” You think that’s a surprising attitude given the state of things, but you decide that you don’t really care.

You make it through security and into your terminal at 9:25, which isn’t really all that bad, considering that you think the Line you went through was literally a mile long. You don’t even bother going to your gate at the terminal, noticing that your flight is no longer on the departures list. Skipping the gate put you in front of about 10 other people who were around you in the Line, and you’re kind of happy about getting through more quickly. After waiting on hold on a little phone for about 15 minutes, you talk to Pat, who is going to help you get to your final destination. You are none too pleased to find out that, while you were in the Line, the 2:00 flight to SFO was booked solid, meaning the next flight out of ATL to the Bay Area that you can have a seat on is at 6:45 PM. You tell Pat that you are a bit frustrated by what you have gone through so far. She says that the security threat popped up unexpectedly. You agree that they have no control over that, but you would have thought that flights would be delayed to accommodate people trying to get through long security lines. Pat puts you on hold. The Girl, with visions of trashed toiletries in her mind, cannot believe how nice and polite you are being to Pat. You agree that you’re pretty steamed, but you are trying extra hard to be nice because you think it’s unlikely that Pat is to blame for all of your woes, and you don’t like to rail at the wrong people. Pat comes back on and tells you that she has putyou in first class on your flight that evening, which makes you a bit happier about the situation. She then tells you that she can’t print out your boarding passes until 6 hours before your flight, though. So you’ll have to come back to get those.

That last statement kind of hammers home just how long you have to wait in the airport. You ask for and receive from an obliging Pat two meal vouchers worth a glorious $7 each. You walk away slowly, not quite sure what to do with your day. You spend the next 4,763 hours reading a book, playing travel Scrabble, calling your travel expert consultant buddy to see if ATL has free Internet access (they don’t), eating lunch at Chili’s Too, discussing whether you would be magnanimous enough to give up your first class seat for any Marines at this point (you decide you might do it grudgingly, but you wouldn’t be happy about it, which probably means it’s not really magnanimous, but it would play out much like the time you were on a redeye back East from Seattle and some old woman was the last person on the plane and ended up sitting in front of you and the flight attendants told her there were no pillows left and you gave her yours but couldn’t stand to listen to her say thank you for the kind gesture and you were unhappy about it and stewed about it for the whole unsleeping flight but you knew you couldn’t have slept anyway if you kept the damned pillow while that woman didn’t have one and it irked you that you couldn’t just pretend to be asleep and not hear like everyone else seemed able to and it continues to irk you to this day), and generally wondering who is going to give you back the day of vacation you are spending in the airport. Sure, you could leave and do something in Atlanta, but you doubt your ability to get back through security before your flight, even if it did only take about 1:30 the first time. Besides, the way things are going, you don’t want to tempt fate, thinking that you might get crushed by a falling elephang driving a Pinto or something equally ridiculous. What makes all this waiting that much more interminable is that a woman makes an announcement every 5 minutes that liquids and gels aren’t allowed beyond the security check points or on the planes. This announcement bothers you immensely for three reasons. First, the frequency of it seems a bit over the top to you. Is it really necessary to play it every 5 minutes? (It might have been every 10 – 15 minutes, but the objection still stands.) Second, you can’t help but think that you are already past the checkpoint, and you had to dump all of those items before you got there, making the announcement pointless, and couldn’t they think to play it where the only people who heard it would be those who might be able to make use of the information? Sure, they’re talking about not taking things on planes, too, but couldn’t they just have the gate agents tell boarders that before they get on the planes? Why do they have to try to annoy you with noise pollution? Third, the woman making the announcement emphasizes the syllables in a VERY annoying manner: “Your attention please. Due to heightened security, all liquids and gels are not allowed beyond the security checkpoints and on planes. This includes beverages, TOOTHpaste, PERfume, SHAMpoo, and other similar items.” [I know that phrasing is weird, but it's what she says.] At one point she stumbled over the words, and you are astounded to think that it isn’t a recording, that she opted to say it that way every time on purpose, probably just to irk you. It’s a good thing that firearms aren’t allowed, because you think from time to time that you understand the motivation behind going postal.

Finally, finally, your flight boarding time comes around, and you settle into your comfy first class seat and kind of smile at the Girl as you push back on time. Neither of you really get into it, though, as you know about a billion things could go wrong before you get there. As if on cue, the pilot announces that the weather has caused a hold on takeoffs, and we’ll just have to wait for a while. You look out the window to see that, sure enough, those thunderstorms you were hoping to avoid by getting on that 2:00 flight have hunkered down over the airport. You sigh, thinking about all the hours that the woman at the ticket counter had stolen from you what seemed like so long ago, and you pick up your book.

After about 2 hours of sitting on the runway (the whole duration of which you were thankful that there weren’t any Marines on your flight) you finally take off and you can’t help but applaud softly. The flight goes pretty smoothly, and you land at OAK. The Girl smiles and whispers that we made it. You point out that you’re not at the gate yet. Once again, on cue, the plane comes to a stop, and the pilot tells you that there’s “some congestion at the gate,” and you’ll have to wait for a short while to get there. After only 15 minutes, you get to the gate and deplane, and you consider kissing the ground of the airport. You don’t, though, because it’s (the ground, but maybe the airport, too) probably pretty dirty.

As you head toward baggage claim, where the Girl’s dad and step mom are waiting to drive you to San Fran, she (the Girl) wonders aloud if your bags will be there. She has shockingly bad luck with her luggage. It gets temporarily lost on trips around 50% of the time she travels by air. You point out that your bags probably made the 9:00 flight. Sure enough, you go into the baggage office and they are waiting for you.

You head out of the airport, chuckling at the fact that the Girl’s dad has just described OAK as “the Greyhound Bus terminal of airports.” As you finally relax into the car, you try to start enjoying your vacation. You also try not to think that you have to fly through ATL on the way back.