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Holding patterns
Dec. 28th, 2007 04:32 pmI woke up this morning (note: that would be morning on Thursday, December 27th) to the sound of someone shouting "Benazir Bhutto ne mara kya?"
No I didn't, I thought sleepily and rolled over. Approximately five minutes later I jumped out of bed and started yelling about how a) Benazir Bhutto was assassinated and b) I had a flight to catch. I didn't have the time to read anything about it before running out of the house in a tizzy.
The thing was, I was supposed to leave Indianapolis at 3.49 in the afternoon, to reach Chicago with an hour and a half to spare to get my connection. But I checked in and everything was fine and dandy until I got to the gate, where they told me my flight was two hours late. Go and join the queue of people to be rebooked, they said. So off I went, fuming slightly, because no one flies from Indianapolis to Chicago unless they have a connection - so the queue had two hundred people in it, and two flight agents coping with all of those people.
So I stood in the queue for an a hour and a half, rang my parents and complained, and re-read the Star Trek books I'd been reading for the nine hours in Boston in the silent air terminal and lone, German-accented agent. After some confusion at the counter - "Manchester, England... no, England, no, really, I don't want to go to New Hampshire today, really" - they rebooked me onto a BMI flight that would get me in only an hour late. Fantastic, I said, I'll take it.
Guess what? The flight was late. Later. Er. And in other circumstances I would have thought that the holding pattern was pretty. I was high enough to see the very last of the sunset, and the circle of six planes, each one a close, vivid star against the pink layers of cloud, but all I could think about was how I had half an hour to catch the connection and we were literally flying in circles. The plane finally hit the tarmac and I hit the ground running. I ran through into the terminal and down the miles of gates and travellators and escalators and beneath the fluourescent tube artwork they have at O'Hare and through from terminal 1 onto the monorail and through to terminal 5 off the train and vaulted people's bags and threw myself at security control. Where they peered at my boarding pass and shook their heads. No. Apparently one cannot present oneself for a six thirty flight at 6.28. It isn't Done. The plane pulled away from the gate without me in it.
And I promptly burst into tears and stomped back across terminals to the American desk positively howling. (This marks the second time - I was running for a flight under fluorescent neon O'Hare artwork and positively howling when leaving the Visit of OMG 1.0.)I have missed two flights, I said, there are no more flights to Manchester today, now what the hell do I do? The flight agent looked it over on the computer and then said, you know, you've got someone looking out for you. God bless my parents, really; with calm efficiency from a distance of four thousand miles, they'd got me re-routed. I was issued with boarding passes to get me from Chicago to Heathrow ("So, would you like the worst seat on the plane or the second worst?") and then to Manchester only eight hours later than planned.
Score. So I rang my parents to thank them, and while rummaging for my phone, realised my grandmother had put a hundred and one dollars in my wallet without my knowing. I do so love my family. They told me to stop being stupid and go and get some dinner. I bought my weight in Chinese food and the American edition of The Fifth Elephant and embarked on the next leg. It pretty much was the worst seat on the plane, and I slept through most of it and got a crick in my neck, but I was impressed that this flight was actually early. It was the worst landing of all time - one of those stomach-dropping-from-sky jobs, and when we finally hit the ground someone two rows behind yelled "Hallelujah!" - and then, being thirty-five minutes early, we sat there until we were an hour late because someone broke the gate. I wish I were kidding. The outgoing plane was stuck umbilically to the airport and we were stuck on the tarmac while they hunted down a guy to fix it.
Sigh. And having made it to Heathrow, and through terminals, bless British Airways too. For my final two hundred miles, the flight left exactly on time, and in the course of a thirty-five minute flight, the nice people at BA gave me M&S-type sandwiches, a giant bar of chocolate, a cup of good coffee and a bottle of wine, before clearing up all the debris with great efficiency and delivering me precisely on time, too. When I come to write my letters about How Much I Hate Domestic Travel to US Airways (nine hours in Boston), United (mechanical failure leading to eight hour detour through Europe), and American (see above re: re-routing), I think I may also write BA a letter telling them how great they are.
But I'm home. I'm home, I'm home, after three weeks, nine thousand miles and five airports, as well as this most recent twenty-four hours in transit, I'm home. When I've had some sleep, I'll finally get around to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
yuletide. (My recs are building up quietly in a big delicious stack.) And for the record, I wrote two Yuletide stories: one full-length, one ficlet. Ficlets/drabbles to anyone who can guess which ones they are.
Siiiiigh. Home.
No I didn't, I thought sleepily and rolled over. Approximately five minutes later I jumped out of bed and started yelling about how a) Benazir Bhutto was assassinated and b) I had a flight to catch. I didn't have the time to read anything about it before running out of the house in a tizzy.
The thing was, I was supposed to leave Indianapolis at 3.49 in the afternoon, to reach Chicago with an hour and a half to spare to get my connection. But I checked in and everything was fine and dandy until I got to the gate, where they told me my flight was two hours late. Go and join the queue of people to be rebooked, they said. So off I went, fuming slightly, because no one flies from Indianapolis to Chicago unless they have a connection - so the queue had two hundred people in it, and two flight agents coping with all of those people.
So I stood in the queue for an a hour and a half, rang my parents and complained, and re-read the Star Trek books I'd been reading for the nine hours in Boston in the silent air terminal and lone, German-accented agent. After some confusion at the counter - "Manchester, England... no, England, no, really, I don't want to go to New Hampshire today, really" - they rebooked me onto a BMI flight that would get me in only an hour late. Fantastic, I said, I'll take it.
Guess what? The flight was late. Later. Er. And in other circumstances I would have thought that the holding pattern was pretty. I was high enough to see the very last of the sunset, and the circle of six planes, each one a close, vivid star against the pink layers of cloud, but all I could think about was how I had half an hour to catch the connection and we were literally flying in circles. The plane finally hit the tarmac and I hit the ground running. I ran through into the terminal and down the miles of gates and travellators and escalators and beneath the fluourescent tube artwork they have at O'Hare and through from terminal 1 onto the monorail and through to terminal 5 off the train and vaulted people's bags and threw myself at security control. Where they peered at my boarding pass and shook their heads. No. Apparently one cannot present oneself for a six thirty flight at 6.28. It isn't Done. The plane pulled away from the gate without me in it.
And I promptly burst into tears and stomped back across terminals to the American desk positively howling. (This marks the second time - I was running for a flight under fluorescent neon O'Hare artwork and positively howling when leaving the Visit of OMG 1.0.)I have missed two flights, I said, there are no more flights to Manchester today, now what the hell do I do? The flight agent looked it over on the computer and then said, you know, you've got someone looking out for you. God bless my parents, really; with calm efficiency from a distance of four thousand miles, they'd got me re-routed. I was issued with boarding passes to get me from Chicago to Heathrow ("So, would you like the worst seat on the plane or the second worst?") and then to Manchester only eight hours later than planned.
Score. So I rang my parents to thank them, and while rummaging for my phone, realised my grandmother had put a hundred and one dollars in my wallet without my knowing. I do so love my family. They told me to stop being stupid and go and get some dinner. I bought my weight in Chinese food and the American edition of The Fifth Elephant and embarked on the next leg. It pretty much was the worst seat on the plane, and I slept through most of it and got a crick in my neck, but I was impressed that this flight was actually early. It was the worst landing of all time - one of those stomach-dropping-from-sky jobs, and when we finally hit the ground someone two rows behind yelled "Hallelujah!" - and then, being thirty-five minutes early, we sat there until we were an hour late because someone broke the gate. I wish I were kidding. The outgoing plane was stuck umbilically to the airport and we were stuck on the tarmac while they hunted down a guy to fix it.
Sigh. And having made it to Heathrow, and through terminals, bless British Airways too. For my final two hundred miles, the flight left exactly on time, and in the course of a thirty-five minute flight, the nice people at BA gave me M&S-type sandwiches, a giant bar of chocolate, a cup of good coffee and a bottle of wine, before clearing up all the debris with great efficiency and delivering me precisely on time, too. When I come to write my letters about How Much I Hate Domestic Travel to US Airways (nine hours in Boston), United (mechanical failure leading to eight hour detour through Europe), and American (see above re: re-routing), I think I may also write BA a letter telling them how great they are.
But I'm home. I'm home, I'm home, after three weeks, nine thousand miles and five airports, as well as this most recent twenty-four hours in transit, I'm home. When I've had some sleep, I'll finally get around to
yuletide. (My recs are building up quietly in a big delicious stack.) And for the record, I wrote two Yuletide stories: one full-length, one ficlet. Ficlets/drabbles to anyone who can guess which ones they are.Siiiiigh. Home.
