Travelling by air can be fun

I literally just got home from my Florida business trip. I had the worst flight experience I've had in a long, long time. If you've been following the news, you already know much of what has been going on with air travel in the last 24 hours, but I was in the dark from noon yesterday onwards. At noon, I left our local office with a co-worker from down there and we headed to the local pistol range. (A couple of range photos will probably appear here later). So, as far as keeping up with the news, I was completely off-the-grid.

After punching lots of holes in innocent paper targets at the range, I got a quick shower and changed clothes, collected my luggage and rental car and drove to the airport. Everything went smoothly (which perhaps should have been my first clue) . . . rental checked in with no problem, picked up my boarding pass and checked my bag with the Homeland Security guy, passed fairly quickly through the security screening, and sat down at my gate to wait for the flight to Atlanta.

The incoming flight from Atlanta was delayed for nearly an hour, which automatically pushed our departure time back by over an hour. In the event, they turned the plane around very quickly and we backed away from the gate only an hour and ten minutes late. We were the only plane waiting for permission to take off, but the tower had some electronics problem which delayed us for another fifteen minutes.

Atlanta was having some very exciting electrical storm, so we circled for quite some time. Eventually, the captain came on the intercom and told us that if we hadn't managed to land within 20 minutes, she'd have to redirect to a different airport, as we were running short of fuel. Apparently the storm had been bad enough to delay scores of planes from landing, so our final approach to the runway took on a bit of an aerial ballet quality . . . there were so many other aircraft in the night sky, including two almost exactly parallel to us on the approach. With all these delays, we were very late getting in (scheduled in at 8:07, but we didn't deplane until 10:30). Even having landed wasn't enough: there were planes scattered all over, waiting for gates to open up for them.

Of course, the terminal we arrived at was under construction, so there were no arrival/departure boards active. I walked halfway across the terminal before I found a set that were working — my connecting flight had already left. A call to the Delta ticketing hotline left me on hold for about 20 minutes before I was able to talk to a live agent. There were no more flights to Toronto until the following morning, but she couldn't transfer my booking to that flight; I'd have to find the ticketing desk at the airport to do that.

You don't really get an idea of the scale of Atlanta's airport until you've walked from one of the outer terminal buildings to the South Terminal (the trains were looking Tokyo-crowded). It's a freakin' big place. And the signage could certainly be improved. Just saying, y'know?

I managed to go the wrong way and found every other airline's baggage services desk. But not the one for this odd, you've-probably-never-heard-of-it-airline called Delta. If I'd turned left instead of right at the top of the escalator, it would have bit me, but I do have a bit of a talent for taking the wrong direction.

And the people. Did I mention all the people? The literally thousands of others who'd also missed their connecting flights? Yeah, they're all straggling around at the same time, looking just as lost as I'm sure I did.

When I'd finally exhausted all the wrong alternatives, I did find the Delta baggage services desk. Yes, my bag would still be going to Toronto, but no, I couldn't get it out before it arrived at its final destination. But they did give me a nice little "emergency overnight kit". It included a toothbrush, toothpaste, folding brush, tiny little deoderant stick, and (most important) a T-shirt. All I had with me was my laptop case, two books (one already finished), a magazine, my camera, my Treo, and my travel documents. The T-shirt was a welcome addition to my collection.

The nice lady at the baggage services desk also suggested I'd want to rebook my ticket tonight, rather than waiting for tomorrow morning. That way, I could just "breeze through security" and as long as I was there within an hour of take-off, I'd be fine. She also told me that the airline would help me find a hotel for the night (that was more than I'd have expected, based on my earlier dealings with airlines). Perhaps the best advice I've had in a long time. There were a hundred or so people waiting for re-ticketing, but where else would I be going? It was after midnight before I got to the head of the line, reticketed, and got a discount coupon for a local hotel. All I had to do, I was told, was go to the ground transportation area and the hotel's shuttle bus would pick me up. Great . . . I'm getting tired, so just falling onto a shuttle bus is as complicated as I could handle.

Except.

Remember those thousands of milling, lost, temporarily-immobilized travellers? A significant number of 'em have been ahead of me, doing the re-ticket and get hotel coupon trick.

And they're all standing in line ahead of me, waiting for the hotel shuttle bus. So I jumped the queue and took a cab instead (I hope my employer will understand the urgency of that expenditure!)

The hotel was a real fleabag . . . when I turned back the covers, there were earwigs under the sheets. Because of all the delays at the airport and getting reticketed, I didn't manage to get in to the hotel until nearly 1, and I had to have a 6 am wake-up call to be back to the airport.

I have this problem sleeping when I know I need to be awake for a certain time. I wake up too early, assume I'm late, and start to panic. It wasn't too bad last night . . . 3am, 4am, 4:30am, 5:20am and 5:50am. I'm operating on too few ZZZZ's.

And today, security at Atlanta was just horrendous . . . I got to the airport at 7:00 and just _barely_ made my 9:15 flight . . . which then sat on the tarmac until 11:30. If I hadn't taken the advice from last night, I'd never have made my flight at all.

It was very weird . . . things that were perfectly acceptable items yesterday were now banned (water bottles, shampoo, mouthwash, toothpaste, etc.). There was a huge pile of personal toiletries being dumped just outside the security screening area. I was "lucky" that my toiletries were in the checked bag which remained at the airport when I went to the hotel.

Update, 11 August: I've been reliably informed that the insects I identified as earwigs were actually bedbugs. Ick. (Actually, looking at the images in those two links, I'll stick to my original identification.)