Rants and Ramblings: random commentary about culture, media, politics, technology and whatnot.

travel tale of woe

“Final call for Tampa. Final call.”

I’m sitting at Gate H14 at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. Hopefully I won’t be sitting here too much longer.

My travel troubles began early this morning.

I generally don’t get much sleep the night before a big trip, what with the procrastinating and the packing and the last-minute trivialities to attend to. That was even moreso the case today, as I was scheduled on a 6:36 a.m. flight from National to O’Hare. Terrified of oversleeping, I set three alarms — two on my clock/radio, one on my cellphone — just to make sure I got up on time.

I called a local cab company at 5:15 a.m. to pick me up and take me to the airport, and was told that a cab would arrive shortly.

Forty-five minutes later, as I stood outside, I wondered what the dispatcher’s definition of “shortly” was.

Just before 6 a.m., I called the dispatcher a second time (I’d called at 5:35 a.m. to confirm that a cab was coming). He told me that he’d just sent a cab to come get me, and that it would arrive soon.

Me: How long is “soon”?
Dispatcher: He’ll be there shortly.
Me: How long is “shortly”?
Dispatcher: Soon. We’ll get you there.

There was a pause, and I heard a good bit of garble over the phone. I repeated that I was concerned about missing my flight, and the dispatcher responded, in that measured, patronizing Tone that customer service types use with difficult customers, that I needed to let him get back to work.

I scanned the streets around me in frustration. In the past half hour, I’d seen cabs from other cab companies drive by on Mt. Vernon Avenue. It was too late to drive myself — parking the car would take too long. Walking toward Mt. Vernon Avenue, I resolved to grab the first cab that came by.

And just then, a cab arrived (from a different cab company than the one I’d called), dropping off a passenger just across the street from my building. My desperation must have been especially obvious, because the man exiting the cab remarked with a smile, “Someone must be looking out for you.”

The cab driver was friendly, accepted credit cards and got me to the airport by 6:10 a.m.

The lines in front of the American counter, and again to the baggage screening station, were long and didn’t look like they were moving at all. Luckily, I’d printed off my boarding passes from home off the American Web site, and I didn’t have any baggage to check, so I was able to head directly downstairs to security. I showed my boarding pass and ID to the TSA screener standing toward the end of the line nearest me, and she kindly hustled me up to the front of another line, grabbing a plastic bin for me on the way.

I made it through security with only a minor snafu (I’d put my laptop bag through the machine on top of the laptop, so they had to take it out and run them through separately) and arrived to my gate with a few minutes to spare. When I got to my seat, I took a deep breath and tried to relax a bit, relieved that I’d made it onto the plane and hoping that the hard part was over.

It wasn’t.

The flight to O’Hare was smooth, and I think we even arrived a few minutes early. But because of the extreme cold temperatures (hovering around 0°), meant that de-icing procedures were in full effect. There was a plane still in our gate with a frozen fuel line (or something like that), and it was taking extra time to thaw. Five minutes, the pilot said.

Half an hour later, the other plane still hadn’t left the gate, and we were reassigned to a new gate. In the meantime, my flight to Tucson had started boarding. Our plane taxied toward the new gate. And stopped. And waited.

My plane was five minutes away from departure, and I had to accept that I wasn’t going to make it. The couple next to me was en route to Springfield, Mo., and their flight was scheduled to leave 15 minutes after mine. They were similarly antsy, and getting frustrated with a flight attendant who was less than sympathetic.

Someone mentioned calling American reservations to rebook — a stellar idea. I flipped through the airline magazine to find the phone number and dialed up the reservations desk on my cellphone. The reservations agent was pleasant and helpful, and soon came back with an option: a 10:23 a.m. flight from O’Hare to Phoenix, followed by a 3:50 p.m. America West flight to Tucson. The latter flight would get me into Tucson by 4:35 p.m. But since I’d arrive in Phoenix at 1:13 p.m., the Tucson flight seemed superfluous and an unnecessary timesuck from the already limited time I have with my family this weekend, I decided to take just the ORD/PHX flight, and someone would come pick me up in Phoenix.

The agent also told me that the flight to Tucson I’d originally been scheduled to take kept being delayed in 5 minute increments, as if it was being held for something. I held out hope that I might still be able to make it.

I slogged my way off the plane and sprinted to the gate for the Tucson flight. The television screens behind the desk announced a flight to Boston, and the attendant at the desk told me that the flight to Tucson was gone.

But the plane was still at the gate. The jetway was pulled back, but the engines were off.

A woman with two young children came up behind me and asked about the Tucson flight. The gate agent told her the same thing, and directed her to a rebooking desk. I accepted defeat, but I decided to stay by the gate until the plane finally departed.

So here I sit at Gate H14. The scene has a weirdly surreal quality to it. Live with Regis and Kelly is on the television above the airport bar; Regis, wearing pajamas, is singing an off-key duet of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” with a 10-year-old. An airport employee bounces between random gates to croon Christmas carols over the PA. My turkey pesto sandwich from Starbucks sounds yummy, but some spilled pesto on the bun looks like a mold infestation.

The flight to Tampa has been delayed due to the cold. I imagine that my flight to Phoenix will be as well.

I can’t wait to get home.