Planes, Trains, but Mainly Airports

So after weeks of not blogging – too much drill baby drill work, Easter and holy week, spring break, my aunt’s funeral, college basketball, opening day, etc. – my recent odyssey in Chicago has prompted me to post again.

It was a weird 24 hours. I arrived at Washington’s National Airport – ironically our most convenient airport – at 2 pm Eastern Time to catch a 4:30 flight to Chicago on my way to the Bay Area for the Western Wilderness Conference. I will finally arrive (I’m typing this on my flight from Chicago) at the airport in San Francisco 29 hours later.

Here’s my itinerary.

I arrived at National early to do a conference call at 3 pm. But even before getting to the airport my ridiculous trip was interrupted by something serious. While waiting for a Yellow Line train at the Gallery Place Metro stop I learned that a women had been stuck by a train at Mount Vernon Square station in an apparent suicide attempt. She survived and was pulled out from under the train (last I heard) but of course trains were not moving through Gallery Place.

I decided to grab a cab to the airport, and was reminded once again how easy it is to get to National. From Gallery Place it took 11 minutes, so I had plenty of time to go through security – which was hassle free - with time to make my conference call.

The call ended at 4 and boarding for my 4:45 United flight was supposed to start at 4:15 but when I went to the gate it was a mob scene. Due to thunderstorms and winds in Chicago, United’s hub, everything was backed up. We finally boarded our flight around 6 pm, taxied onto the apron of the runway then waited another hour and a half for skies to clear in Chicago. Yadda yadda yadda, I didn’t arrive in Chicago until 9 pm central time, 10 minutes after the last flight from O’Hare had left for San Francisco. Our Sierra Club travel agent rebooked me onto a 6:40 am flight – that I changed to an 8:30 flight - and recommended the airport Hilton. 

But as I tried to change my seat assignment at 7:30 am this morning I learned that that flight was cancelled. After calling United I found out the next direct flight to SFO that had seats was at 2:00.  I was given another center seat, but after saying ‘after all I’ve been through I have to sit in the center?’ the United staffer gave me an aisle seat.

She also gave me a ticket to stand by on a noon flight, a flight I later found out was so overbooked I was 72^nd on the stand by list even though I had checked in almost 5 hours ahead of time.

But the 2 pm flight is working out great. In addition to an aisle seat I was given a ‘Premier’ boarding pass so was able to board with Zone 1 right after first class, and I got to watch ‘Crazy Heart’ as my movie.

Here are some more random musings about this trip:

• On par, O’Hare is not a bad airport to be stuck in. The one huge downside, both of the airport and the airport Hilton, is no free Wi-Fi! Having to pay for Wi-Fi in an airport or hotel is simply an injustice (speaking of injustice, Duke winning the national championship in another one.  Butler deserved to win that game and close out a storybook NCAA tournament, but instead the big, bad right-wing school killed Little Red Riding Hood).

• My iPhone made the lack of Wi-Fi doable. As for O’Hare, some of the terminals themselves are interesting; I like the neon light show in the tunnel between terminals B and C, and there is some nice public art between the United and American terminals, too. There’s also a children’s museum and a nice display about Medal of Honor winner and pilot John O’Hare, the airport’s namesake.  As you can tell, I killed time between breakfast with four works calls and a very long walk around O’Hare.

• Food wise I did okay, too.  Last night there was only a Starbucks open but I found a nice chicken-cheddar sandwich and an excellent granola-blueberry-strawberry yogurt parfait there for dinner. This morning I had an egg and cheese sandwich with hash browns from the Billy Goat Tavern in the ‘Jazz Food Court.’  The Billy Goat is the Greek-owned establishment made famous by John Belushi (cheeburger cheeburger cheeburger, no coke Pepsi), and I got to eat while listening to Miles Davis’ ‘Kind of Blue’ in the background.

• I went back to the ‘Jazz Food Court’ for lunch at the Zoot Diner. I had a decent turkey sandwich but enjoyed my desert of chocolate covered raisins from ‘Nuts on Clark’ better. I’m hoping that both Zoot and Nuts are local, Chicago businesses.

• Oddly enough, when I asked for peanuts or pretzels on the flight to San Francisco they said ‘no.’ Are you allowed to take off without those two foods? Does the FAA know that?

• It’s the midwest so it makes sense, but everyone I talked to at the airport, particularly the United employee who gave me the aisle seat but also the security people to the cashier at Zoot who happily gave me another copy of my receipt, were incredibly nice.

• This may be especially true at a large facility like O’Hare but you seem to run into every single type of human being at the airport. Every continent is represented, you hear dozens of languages, you bump into the abled and disabled, young and old, etc.  The only people I didn’t run into were assholes. 

• One thing that struck me at the ‘Jazz Food Court’ was how many ethnic Chinese were eating the Chinese food. There was a flight leaving for Beijing near by, so by Chinese I don’t mean Chinese-Americans. I kind of assumed Chinese food in the U.S. is a little dumbed down but at least today real Chinese were loving it; maybe it’s more authentic here than I thought.

• As I mentioned I had a ‘Premier’ boarding pass but I still had to board after first and business class.  First class passengers get to walk on an actual red carpet when they board, which seems a little excessive.  First class on a westbound flight seems different. On the east coast, first class is full of serious folks in suits. On this flight there are a number of fat dudes in jeans and sweat pants in first class, many sporting van dykes and sloppy hair cuts.

This trip, along with our problematic flights to and from Athens via Paris last summer, is another reminder to avoid connecting flights whenever possible (which I’m doing on my return flight). So even though National is our most convenient airport I think next time I fly to the ‘fat-guys in first class’ coast I’ll use Dulles (BTW, Alaska Airline has a non-stop to Seattle from National, the Ted Stevens Memorial flight).

Despite all the delays and hassles, I still like to travel. I also finished watching ‘Up in the Air’ on this trip.  At one point George Clooney opines that things like family and responsibility slows you down, and if you slow down you die faster.  Of course, that is completely wrong.  Family, and especially kids, speed up time. And as I found out today traveling like he does in that movie can make time stand still.