The Long Trip Home

I’m normally a huge Southwest fan, but they failed on this. No announcement was made when they moved the gate.

I’m home. Google says if I drove it it would have taken 43 hours covering 2,885 miles. I’ll keep that in mind as I look back on the 12 hour door-to-door trip.

My secretive friend called “Super Shuttle” to take me to LAX. He told them the flight, scheduled for 12:25 PM, and they offered a 9:15-9:25 AM pickup. That sounded awful early for a drive that normally clocks in under a half hour. I was at LAX two and a half hours before my flight.

I checked my bag at the curb. The skycap wrote Gate 14 on my boarding pass and pointed me in the right direction. The departure area was busy, but I found a seat.

LAX isn’t particularly WiFi friendly. There are few electric outlets. The WiFi service is “pay-per-byte.” I pulled out my BlackBerry and played around. I was in my own world as flights came and left.

Around 12:10 a young man came and asked me if I was on the Chicago flight? He was wondering why it wasn’t on the board at the gate and why it hadn’t been called. Good question. We went to another gate where we were told it wasn’t at Gate 14 it was at 4A.

I’m normally a huge Southwest fan, but they failed on this. No announcement was made when they moved the gate. It’s probable the move was made shortly after I headed there… maybe while I was heading there. There were a handful of us waiting in the wrong place! Without this lucky questioner I surely would have missed the flight–something I’ve never done in 40+ years of flying.

Southwest compounded their failure by not having information monitors. We had to wait in line and see a person to get the gate info.

Though I had an “A” boarding pass by the time I got to the gate the waiting area was empty. Nearly everyone else was on. I walked back to the only non-middle seat left. It was 20F in the non-reclining last row. On the aisle was a man who looked to be around 30. In his lap, Randy.

I’m a dad. I understand you can’t control small children–you wouldn’t want to. What follows is observation more than kvetching.

At 10,000 feet the first ding rang over the PA and Randy, nearly two years old, was moved to the middle seat. He was mostly quiet but squirmy. Me too. I pulled out my horse collar and tried to fall asleep.

I’m not sure how long I was unconscious when the pounding began. Randy was getting me with his feet and his hands. He meant no harm. In fact, he probably didn’t understand what he was doing. This continued intermittently for the next four hours or so. He did a little yelping as well.

Delayed Southwest flightWe landed at Chicago’s Midway Airport, waited a few minutes for a free gate and pulled in. I had about an hour between flights… well it was scheduled as an hour. The sign at the gate said otherwise.

Though I criticized Southwest for the earlier gate debacle they get a pass on this. Our flight to Hartford, last of the day, was being held for incoming passengers. I have been on the receiving end of this act of airline kindness in the past.

It was a bumpy ride as we passed over the disturbed weather that’s raining on Connecticut today. At one point the pilot asked the flight attendants to be seated and phone the cockpit when they were! Nice touch, but probably overly cautious. Let them err on the side of safety.

We landed in Hartford behind a Southwest plane from Las Vegas. Their bags came off first. That gave me the opportunity to run into and talk with my friend Harold and his wife Karen who were coming home from their daughter’s graduation (PhD, thank you) in Santa Cruz.

My drive home was uneventful though I was beginning to drag. I walked into my darkened house around midnight.

“Feels like you’ve been gone three weeks, doesn’t it?” Helaine asked this morning. Yup. Why is sitting in a seat so exhausting?

Midway Is Part Way To Vegas

It’s so nice not to have to find a powered wall to sit near (usually on-the-floor).

midway-power-plug.jpgWe are on-the-ground at Chicago’s Midway Airport. As we taxied to our gate it was easy to see how shoehorned in this airport is. There were row homes just feet beyond the airport’s fence. The runways here are about half as long as nearby O’Hare.

Our gate has more of those big chairs from Bradley. These, however, do have power plugs. It’s so nice not to have to find a powered wall to sit near (usually on-the-floor).

No free Wi-Fi at this airport. I’m using my cellphone as a modem. It’s perfect for short stretches like this. No Bluetooth in this laptop either (who knew) so I’m wired up through a USB port.

I just checked on Stef’s flight. She’s crossing the border into Ohio, doing 407 knots at 36,000 feet. My folks are 32,000 feet above Tallahassee cruising at 380 knots. They should get to Vegas on-time or close.

The incoming leg of our next flight is behind schedule from Norfolk. We’ll be a little late to McCarren.

It’s Wisconsin

I’m writing tonight from a motel in Mequon, WI – just north of Milwaukee. The story of the day is the trip here.

We left Connecticut on Southwest’s 12:50 PM flight to Chicago’s Midway Airport. Driving to the airport, parking and boarding was no problem. In fact, somehow Helaine has gotten off the TSA’s ‘frisk me every time’ list. We don’t know how.

Thunderstorms were expected this afternoon in Connecticut (and from the radar, it looks like much of the state got hit). That meant building clouds as we flew west and a very bumpy ride.

It didn’t much matter, because no sooner had we left the ground than I had my ‘ox yoke’ on and was snoozing. That lasted nearly 45 minutes, which was when someone right behind us began sneezing.

These weren’t dainty achoos. This was projectile sneezing! Then another nearby voice loudly complained that someone else had spilled a drink on him.

There would be no more sleeping for me.

We were on time into Midway. I know the airport because I’ve seen it so many times from Microsoft’s Flight Simulator. From the air it looks like a square plot with criss crossing runways.

Since it’s the second airport in Chicago, I expected it to be a small facility. Houston’s like that with Hobby versus IAH. I could not have been more wrong. I was very surprised.

While Helaine and Stef went for the bags, I headed to Hertz to fill out the paperwork for our car. Helaine had found an unbelievable deal on Hotwire – better than half off anything else available.

Before I go on, let me mention the obvious. It could have been named Pleasant Experience Rent-a-car. It was not. Though an alternative spelling was used, Hertz pretty much sums up my experience today.

There were two people behind the counter and somewhere between 15 and 20 in line when I arrived just before 2:15 PM! Though two others would be added to the staff, it took a full hour (almost to the minute) before I was served.

The woman behind the counter was nice enough. She slavishly asked each insurance and gasoline question, though she must have known from my answer to question one that I was saying no to everything.

About three quarters of the way through the process, a woman came up behind her and whispered in her ear. Helaine heard the words, “emergency at home.” In a flash she was gone.

Her replacement came out a few minutes later. The first thing we noticed about her was that she didn’t seem to notice us. It was as if we were totally invisible.

She immediately set out to clean her area. She rearranged papers, moved things, lowered the computer keyboard, sanitized the desk. When she finally looked up at us, she said, “Do you think I have a problem?”

I didn’t have the heart to tell her how many paragraphs she’d get. Helaine looked at me and said, “This is going in the blog.”

You betcha!

Our car is a Buick La Cross. You know, it’s not bad. Good going GM. It’s got comfortable large seats and a good size tunk… though without a light (or at least a working light).

We headed north for Milwaukee. Midway is an old airport, shoehorned in by neighborhoods that have grown around it. Traffic was heavy and slow as we moved down busy Cicero toward I-55 South.

The idea was to skirt around Chicago and avoid the traffic. Still, it’s disconcerting to get on the ramp for I-55 toward St. Louis.

We took I-55 to I-294, the Illinois Tollway. Illinois has its own RFID toll system – I-Pass. I don’t have one. I should have thought about that before I got caught in an I-Pass only lane! I’ll let you know when they catch up with me and send the bill.

The traffic was horrendous. We stopped more than once. At other times we were cruising along at 4 or 5 mph.

In case you’ve never been to the Midwest, a little physical description: nondescript. It is much less green than Connecticut. The vegetation is significantly more scrubby. There are probably other locales less physically stirring. I just can’t think of any off hand.

Somewhere in Northern Illinois things lightened up and we started to move nicely. The three of us were happy…then a police car raced by… and another.

North of Milwaukee a tanker truck was on the center divider. A set of wheels was at a 90&#176 angle to the truck and connected to nothing. Good grief – another half hour lost I’ll never get back.

We did finally make it to the hotel and dinner with my folks, sister and brother-in-law.

Honestly, I’m so exhausted right now the story will just have to wait.