This Storm Should Have Been Named Fey ... Part I

August 22, 2008 - Anything You Can Plan, I Can Plan Better; I Can Plan Anything Better Than You!

I don't believe in omens, portents, or auguries ... the only foreshadowing that I subscribe to is of a literary nature. And yet, I must confess that between the schizophrenic and excruciatingly slow travels of Tropical Storm Fay and my visit to the doctor for treatment of another urinary tract infection and a strained sacroiliac joint, I was already wondering if this weekend trip courtesy of Jay's employer might not turn out to be something of a bust.

I was also less than thrilled about our travel arrangements. Because the company uses a corporate travel service we were all booked as a group on Delta Airlines. I have nothing personal against Delta, they seem like a fine airline all things considered and were actually quite pleasant to deal with during our travels, but Delta doesn't fly non-stop from St. Louis to Ft. Lauderdale, which is where we were headed with about 150 other employees and their significant others. Whenever possible Jay and I try to book non-stop flights, especially to Florida. And the thing that annoyed me the most about our arrangements was that Southwest Airlines was offering a non-stop, round-trip flight for half the cost of the Delta flights, which included a two-hour layover in Atlanta on both of our travel days. Apparently logic and convenience don't apply in the corporate travel world, but as Jay reminded me ... this trip was free and it would probably be a good idea for me to take another darvocet and call it a chill pill. After all, we would never have visited the Boca Raton Beach & Yacht Club or been able to do the really cool things we did on this trip without the generosity of his company and their employee anniversary program. So among the standard items that we packed for our weekend getaway, I made sure to include a healthy dose of gratitude, patience, and good humor.

Our day began bright and early at 5AM; we cleaned up quickly, finished packing, told the kitty goodbye, warned him that Stinky Grandma would be coming to check on him in our absence, and were out the door by 6:15AM headed for Stinktown International Airport. Although our flight wasn't scheduled to leave until 8:45AM, we know Stinktown traffic well enough to know that leaving the house early is way better than leaving at a reasonable time only to miss the flight because we got stuck in twenty miles of traffic due to rain, wind, sunlight, fog, cloudiness, overturned sugar trucks, wild animal attacks along the highway's shoulder, or alien invasion. You may think that I exaggerate the overall cussedness of Stinktown traffic, but I don't. In general, people here (and I guess that includes Jay and me, too) are craptacular drivers who seem to go out of their way to create a traffic backlog whenever possible.

Thankfully the traffic gods smiled on us and we found ourselves waiting in line at at the Delta self-service kiosk just before 7AM, and it was a good thing, too, because here's where the day started to get a bit wonky and it continued to wobble and wonk for the next twelve hours. While waiting in line I asked the Delta "helper man" what we needed to do since we already had paper tickets. He told us to swipe a credit card into the kiosk and the computer would locate the name on our reservation and all would be right with the world. We tried to explain that we hadn't actually made this reservation and we sure as hell hadn't paid for it with any of our credit cards but he insisted in a rather toneless voice that it didn't matter.

Alrighty, Mr. Roboto, but I'm telling you this ain't gonna work.

Jay inserted his credit card, pushed a few on-screen buttons as directed, and was promptly told by the computer system that it could not locate our reservation.

Oh my, what a surprise; we never would have seen that coming. ;-)

To his credit, Mr. Roboto Helper-Monkey Man was right there to make us do the whole thing again under his watchful eye because we'd obviously screwed something up while trying to check-in on our own. After determining that perhaps Jay and I weren't as stupid as he'd first thought, he then whipped out his high-level encrypted supervisor card and tried to over-ride the computer.

**Snicker**

That didn't work either.

**Snicker**

We finally had to ask for the help of one of the agents behind the counter who performed a reservation search and rescue mission only to find that all 150 people from Stinktown traveling to Ft. Lauderdale via Atlanta were lumped into one group reservation. She had to extract us from the group before we could get our boarding passes, but once that was completed we had only to make our way to the security checkpoint, get the TSA stamp of approval, nab a couple of lattes and a few breakfast munchies from Starbucks (gotta love gift cards from Grimace), and hurry up and wait.

While we watched the incessant CNN coverage of Tropical Storm Fay AKA I'm Gonna Ruin Your Travel Plans No Matter Where You're Headed, more and more of Jay's co-workers shuffled in. For me it was a bit of a strange experience because I used to work at this same company ... I started there before Jay did and had I stayed we would have celebrated my 10-year anniversary there last year. However, during a rather bad time for the company my department / function was eliminated and there just wasn't anywhere else for me to go than out the door and into the waiting arms of three, no, four other companies. I didn't expect so many people to remember me and they were all super-nice which means I must have left on good terms or more likely they were being friendly because they all hold Jason in such high regard.

We must give some kudos to Delta for relatively friendly service and for making announcements in the terminal that not only could be heard but were actually distinguishable as being spoken in English. And thanks to these easy to hear / understand announcements we became aware of something that Delta calls Baby in Arms. This is actually for parents traveling with infants who are too young to be ticketed - mom or dad's ticket indicates that she or he has a small person traveling with them with the boarding pass designation called Baby in Arms.

Jay and I, of course, turned this into a running joke for the next three hours creating a shared vision of a vast army of diaper clad, beret wearing infants sporting bandoliers and toy machine guns. We imagined the germ warfare department headed up by a croupy little guy wearing thick, horn-rimmed glasses while the poison gas division fell under the supervision of the insidious Baby Blatt, best known for a particularly ripe brand of flatulence which he credits to large servings of dried fruit. And worst of all, the psychological warfare group with its focus on sleep deprivation led by the diabolical Sherry "The Screech Owl" Sugarland, who currently holds the infant crying jag world record at 18 hours, 47 minutes, and 24 seconds and whose cries have been recorded at decibel levels higher than that of a jet engine.

Tremble in fear, oh intrepid travelers, for when you hear the wail of an infant on your next Delta flight, the Babies in Arms aren't far behind!

Luckily we were spared the horrors of the infant army on the first leg of our journey, and a good thing, too, because the plane we were on was tiny. Our seats were in row 12 and that just happened to be the last row in the plane. I have never flown on an aircraft as small as this one but according to Jay, who has flown in teeny little puddlejumpers, this plane was downright spacious. We had an uneventful flight to Atlanta, and spent our time snickering about the Baby in Arms program and devising an eating plan for October's trip to Walt Disney World.

Upon arrival in Atlanta we noticed how very windy the weather had become, in part because we had to exit the wee little plane right there on the tarmac and push our way into the edge of the terminal. We had two hours to kill before our next flight so there was plenty of time for us to make our way back to the more civilized areas of Hartsfield Jackson Airport (which I mistakenly called Hartsdale in an earlier post). If I have a favorite airport I think it may be this one ... it's spacious, it's clean, it's filled with tasty food options, and it has a cool little subway system to whisk passengers to the appropriate concourse, of which I think there are six.

We made our way to the A-concourse where our next flight would board and stopped at the Sam Adams Brew House for some lunch. Their menu was a bit limited, but they were in a pretty small spot right next to the gate so I suppose it's unreasonable to expect an extensive list of items from which to choose. And who cares anyway when they have beer on tap?! I ordered a standard cheeseburger and a Sam Adams Summer Ale while Jason ordered the lime infused chicken and brie sandwich with a Boston Lager. Sorry, no pictures this time ... it was pretty close quarters in there and neither one of us wanted to dig around in my backpack for a camera. The food was good, though, considering that we were in an airport; nothing to get too excited about but it really hit the spot and considering the adventure ahead of us it was a good thing we stopped for sustenance.

By the time we finished eating and headed over to the gate they were already in the process of boarding. Talk about a day of contrasts ... from the teeny little paper mache airplane that brought us from St. Louis we were now entering the vast belly of a 757; this plane had 50 rows, six seats per row, and handy little televisions hanging overhead that were used to bore everyone with airline safety procedures. Too bad they didn't just turn on the Weather Channel instead - at least then we would had some warning of what was to come ...