Chapter 1: The Legend of the Layovers

Ah the morning arrives. I’ve been planning this since seventh grade, and now here it is, the day I actually leave for my world adventures. It was a typical morning of making sure the suitcase is packed correctly, the carryon has enough entertainment to last until the apocalypse, the dogs have had their photos taken, the batteries to every electronics item within a fifty mile radius are fully charged, my bed is made (sort of), my room is tidy (sort of), and all the other general this and that that comes with trying to get a traveler and her accompanying paraphernalia out the door. Which we eventually did. I sniffed the air for the last time (by the time I come back it will be summer and that smells quite different), I said bye to the dogs, we did a short departing ardas, and then we were off, speeding down the snowy highway towards the legendary land of Albuquerque. Yep, that’s what a good snowfall will do. It makes even Albuquerque look legendary.

We finally arrived at the airport and pulled my things out of the trunk. My mom drove off to park the car and my dad sauntered away to use the facilities while I dragged my stuff up through the international check-in line at American Airlines. I innocently go up to the desk and give the lady my ticket and passport. She very dully informs me that my flight has been cancelled.

My brain: “Hmmm, what?”

My mouth: “Oh.”

My dad (returning): “What’s happening?”

My mouth: “Flight’s cancelled.”

My brain: “Is this bad?”

The lady explains that due to severe ice storms in Dallas, the flight’s been cancelled. She can try to put me on a flight for tomorrow.

My brain: “Wait, wait, wait… tomorrow? Oh. This is bad.”

And within the hour we’re speeding back across the snowy highway, back away from legendary Albuquerque, which is really starting to look less legendary and more like an annoyingly long and worthless drive. So I’m booked on a flight for tomorrow. What does that mean? What if the ice storms are still going? The weather channel doesn’t mention any expectation of the storm dying down. My dad has already been attempting to get on the phone with British Airways for the past hour trying to rebook the part of my flight from London to Munich. A good while and many extra euros later, the flight has been rebooked. But what if my flight is cancelled tomorrow too? Is it going to be another two hours and thirty euros every time the planes decide not to fly?

So we kill the rest of the day (no, I’m not kidding, we spent it in Borders and watching TV, we really killed it) and decide to call it a night. I’ve already gone online to American Airlines and set up a flight status notification, so in theory they will leave me a voice message on my cell phone if the status of the flight changes in any way. Currently the status is still set to on time. My previous flight had been cancelled something like twenty four hours in advance (nah, no point in warning the passengers), so the fact that by this time the flight still seemed to be going had us feeling at least hopeful, if not optimistic. When I turned off my light around 11 pm, the flight was still set to on time.

5:00 am and my alarm obnoxiously wakes me up. I reach for my phone to turn it off and notice that I have a new message. I call my voicemail, fearing the worst, and that’s exactly what I get. Go figure. Maybe I should have tried not fearing it. A simulated computer voice, through which every single word is articulated either as a complete sentence or as a question, informs me that my flight has been cancelled.

“Flight number. 1. 4. 7. 2. To. Dallas? Texas. Has been? Cancelled.”

In my groggy early morning fog I hoarsely try to call out to my parents to let them know the news and that they can stop frantically running about the house and getting things in order and begin frantically running about the house and trying to figure out a flight. My dad gets on the phone with the airlines yet again and I go to sleep yet again because hey, my flight’s been cancelled, right? So why not sleep in? Yeah well that didn’t last long.

Suddenly I’m being informed that I’m now on a flight on a completely different airline flying into Washington DC of all places and it leaves in 3 hours. This information translates roughly into “PANIC” because if it leaves in 3 hours we should already have left the house and the car’s not even packed yet. So that’s what we do. We panic, and sort of as an afterthought we get out of the house as well and speed, yet again, down the snowy highway towards Albuquerque. This is all looking fishily similar to me, only this time Albuquerque has definitely lost any semblance of epic that the snow had ever given it. At the airport I tentatively go to check in and incredibly enough, it all seems to go according to plan. Well, aside from the fact that we had to go to about four different desks in order to get a ticket and a boarding pass and get my bag checked.

Let me describe to you how the checking of the bag went. It may sound simple, but it’s very important. Pay attention. There will be a test. The way my flight was set up, I had one ticket as far as London and then another separate ticket and reservation from London on to Munich, though both were with British Airways. Therefore I had sort of assumed that I would have to pick up my bags in London and re-check them on to Munich, something which sounded relatively fine, as I had about 7 hours in London. Yet here I am at the United Airlines ticket counter, and she asks me if I’d like to check my bag all the way through to Munich. Well that sounds lovely, so I go ahead and tell her she can do that.

This was a brand new suitcase. Never been used except for one short flight from Austin to Albuquerque. The last time I saw my luggage before it disappeared under those rubber flappy things that airports seem to be so fascinated with, it was perfectly pristine, green and shinyish, no scratches, no blemishes, and only one spindly luggage tag extending from the handle like a feather from Robin Hood’s hat. Oh yeah, and a luggage tag that was so neon pink it would hurt Barbie’s eyes. I thought it was a rather nice touch.

Well, the plane flew. It flew all the way from Albuquerque to Washington DC, in fact, all without trouble. Not only that, but we had some very strong tail winds, so we got into Washington about 20 minutes early, landing at about 3:45 in the afternoon. I then consulted my ticket to London and noticed that it didn’t leave until 9:45 pm. I also noticed that there was a much earlier flight to London leaving at 6:45 and wondered why they had given me such an unnecessarily long layover when it was in fact… unnecessary. So I decided to investigate and see if I couldn’t get on the earlier flight as a standby.

I went to the British Airways desk. Nobody there.

I went to a different British Airways desk. Nobody there.

I went to an American Airlines desk since the two are partners. A decent line there.

I went to a different American Airlines desk. An even more decent line there.

I went back to the British Airways desk. Still no one there.

I went back to the American Airlines desk and stood in line. When I finally got to the front and asked the lady if she could either work on British Airways flights from there or if she could point me in the right direction, she pointed me in the direction of the British Airways Elite “We Love You Because You Give Us Plenty of Money” Lounge, which in fact had a much shorter and more ambiguous name and also, incidentally enough, turned out to be the wrong direction.

I went into the British Airways “We Love Your Money” Lounge and spent a good ten minutes sorting the whole thing out with the lady there before it suddenly occurred to her that what I wanted to do wasn’t actually possible from her desk. She pointed me in a new wrong direction.

Following her instructions I found one of those nifty little people mover things that took me all the way to the main terminal where I climbed stairs, followed tunnels, searched for signs, and generally had an adventure of a time finding the British Airways main ticket desk, a task which also involved leaving security, something which I did grudgingly.

I went to the British Airways main desk and tried to explain to a thickly accented man what exactly it was that I wanted to do. He pointed me yet again in the wrong direction, telling me that I’d have to go argue with United Airlines about giving British Airways my bag so that it could get on the flight with me.

I followed many more stairs and halls and mysteriously nonexistent signs until I found the United Airlines luggage office, which looked more like a refugee site than a baggage claim. All around the claim were rows and rows of unclaimed baggage. People wandered listlessly around the area, picking absent-mindedly at abandoned bags as though in a state of deep despair. The office itself had a line of 20 people out the door, all trying to find what on earth had happened to their luggage, all looking worried, all looking like they had been standing there for quite some time. If I had been born a little less of an optimist I might have worried at that point, but as it was I remained blissfully oblivious for the next several hours.

In any case I was NOT willing to stand in line for ten thousand years just so I could be pointed in a new wrong direction, so I went back up to British Airways where a very American lady told me flat out that I would absolutely not be getting on the earlier flight. With a sigh I checked in for my later one and made my way back through security and back to my gate to see if there was the slightest chance that another representative might have a bit more idea of what they were talking about.

I did not find a British Airways representative, but I did find a lovely little placard informing me that my flight would in fact not be departing until 10:45 pm. I glanced at the time. 5:00 pm.

Sigh. This was just not my week.

I became very good friends with those people movers over the next many hours. I entertained myself by exploring as many different terminals as I could, or sometimes just by going back and forth along the people movers. Terminal B was particularly exciting, for two main reasons. 1. Ben and Jerry’s. Nothing like ice cream to get you through a layover, though I don’t recommend Bananas on the Rum or whatever the heck that ice cream is called. It tastes not very much like bananas and very much like fake. I should’ve gone with Dublin Mudslide. Awesome every time. Oh well.

Ahem. Moving on.

2. Inmotion Entertainment, which was also particularly exciting for two main reasons. 1. Electronics. For some reason it’s really hard not to kill time when you’re looking at electronics. 2. The guy who worked there. He performed magic tricks with little red foam balls. If you didn’t want any magic tricks you had to be careful not to walk too close to the counter or he’d get you. I personally found the tricks rather amusing. However, there’s only so many times you can have a red ball appear in your own hand before you really need to move on to something else. Which in my case was the people movers. Again.

Eventually I wandered back to Inmotion Entertainment to investigate the possibility of renting a DVD player and DVD from Red Foam Ball Man who once again whipped out the red foam balls and made them appear in my hand. He also turned out to be incredibly talkative, so I managed to use up a good twenty minutes chatting about this and that while I perused the list of movies and finally settled on Thank You For Smoking. Which I proceeded to rent and then watch, when suddenly there was a turn of events. (Good movie by the way).

By the time I had finished renting and watching the movie it was just about almost 10:00 pm. I had brought the movie back to my gate to watch it so that I would be aware if anything changed about my flight. I now had just enough time to get back over to Terminal B, return the equipment, and get back to my gate in time for boarding. Yeah, that’s right, I had seven hours in the airport and still managed to run out of time, can you believe it?

I quickly walked over to one of them lovely people movers and headed towards Terminal B. I moved through Terminal B as fast as I could, noticing that all the stores were now closed and also bitterly remembering that I had forgotten to get myself dinner. The Inmotion Entertainment gate was still half open as Red Foam Ball Guy was still tidying up in there, so I quickly gave him back the DVD Player, was wished a good time in Europe, and dashed back toward the people movers, beginning to feel the time pressure. I ran up to the people movers where a guard type guy told me that they stopped running at 10:00 pm. They only ran between the lettered terminals and the main terminal, which was significantly farther away from D than B was. I had not calculated this in my plan.

I dashed onto the mover, which rumbled off towards the main terminal. It took FOREVER. Finally it arrived, and I quickly leapt onto the next mover that was departing for Terminal D. The little sign said that it would be departing in 5 minutes and 46 seconds.

My brain: “Not in five minutes! Leave now! Leave now!”

And it did, miraculously enough. It left now. There was another family on the mover that had a plane leaving in ten minutes. They had already submitted to their uncertain fate as to whether they’d make it home tonight or not. They actually had it worse than me, which made me not feel so bad. I said a little prayer that they’d make it onto their flight and then ran off towards my own the instant the mover touched home. Quite naturally I never saw the family again, so I have no idea whether or not they made it. I’d like to think they did.

I, on the other hand, most certainly did. I got there just in time to stroll leisurely up to the back of the line but didn’t let myself breathe a full sigh of relief until I was sitting firmly in my seat with my seatbelt fastened, just like the little light told me to do.

My seat: 50K. And to that I toast the small miracles of the world. Those of you who spend November as a sleep-deprived follower of Chris Baty will know what I mean.

The flight was fine, but I didn’t sleep. The reason my having forgotten to get myself dinner was a problem was because in the course of the whole flight change fiasco, the airline somehow found it impossible to also change my vegetarian food reservation. Judging by their response to the whole thing, I must conclude that most people are vegetarians for only one flight at a time. When they change their flights they must also change their eating habits. Remaining a vegetarian for two days in a row must be very unusual on a plane. Why else should they be so amazed that I might in fact still want a vegetarian meal? So I got beef. And ate a spongy dinner roll. With butter that was probably fake. And the lady still looked curious as to why I had not eaten my dinner. Funny.

The truncated nighttime lasted the full span of one movie (the Science of Sleep, also a good movie) and then the sun rose, just as we came over the coast of Ireland. I took a bathroom break and by the time I came back Ireland was gone again. And then in not too much longer we touched down to a foggy day in London, which I’m told is an average day in London.

I spent six hours there. For your information, the Heathrow airport is abominable, and don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. Those six hours consisted of me eating a not-so-fantastic burger, perfecting the art of falling fully asleep while still sitting up, wondering how many perfume shops a single airport could reasonably contain, and wondering whether Heathrow had not exceeded that number. At least I think that’s how I spent the time. I was so tired I can hardly remember. But pass the time I did, and before I knew it I was boarding the plane to my next adventure: Munich.