The Banjo Bandit

10 Saturday Sep 2011

Posted by in Seatmate Shenanigans

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Trip type: Business

Airline: Delta

Route: ATL-MSP

When returning from a work trip, especially one that started with a 6am flight Monday and is ending on an 8pm flight Thursday, the last–and I mean the last–thing I want to do is talk to my seatmate.

Naturally, whenever this perfect storm arises, my seatmate always wants to talk to me. On a Delta weekday flight out of Atlanta chock-full of Zone 1 businessmen who wait to board in a line at the priority boarding carpet and fake call in eleventh hour sales deals, I will invariably not be seated next to one of them. And this is a shame because they are quiet. They too have put in a long week and just want to get a drink and pretend it’s already Friday.

Instead of one of these lovely gentlemen, I will, 90% of the time, get a seatmate like the one I got on this particular trip: an early-70s retiree who’s young enough to be able to torment me with an iPhone but too old to really relate to me in any meaningful way (“I used an abacus when I started my accounting firm!” I don’t think he was kidding.)

I’ve just settled in at my favorite point in the trip: 10,000 feet. I like to start all my trips the same way:

1. Frenzied panic to board until I can rest assured I have overhead space.

2. Furiously email/text until the door shuts.

3. Anxiously monitor the taxi out to ensure there are is no Tarmac “resting”.

4. Catnap until 10,000 feet when I have to make the decision between work and iPad. The iPad almost always wins on trips home.

So here we are at 10,000 feet. Time to boot up the iPad and ensconce myself in some combination of downloaded magazines, music, Sudoku, or shows/movies until the drink cart comes by. Decisions, decisions.

I’m just getting a playlist running and a Sudoku game warmed up when I sense the gentleman next to me leaning over and saying something. I know that I’ve described myself as that person who can’t not talk to someone who initiates conversation but in a setup like this, unless you’re reminding me to take my heels off before we go down an emergency slide, STFU.

I take my earbud out and say, “Sorry?” in a way that I hope conveys that I’m not and he says: “I’ve always wondered how to play that game!” I respond with something noncommittal, hoping we can leave it at that but apparently that’s not in the cards. “So…explain to me what you’re doing.”

Really? Really? I try to be good natured and sort of explain Sudoku but he’s really not getting it, despite the fact he’s a close-talker who’s allllll up in my seat, leaning over the iPad. He mentions that he thought he’d be better at understanding it since he was an accountant and I counter that I thought I’d be worse at understanding it because I was an English major but oh well!

The flight devolves from there, at least for me. I can’t remember the segue (scintillating I’m sure), but somehow I find myself looking at blurry pictures on his iPhone of him and the Banjo Bandits (real) playing at local legions and VFWs and hearing stories of how he learned to play the banjo partly on his own and partly from a homeless man on a park bench (also real. He brought him muffins in return for lessons).

This goes on for the ENTIRE flight. As I’m on the window and he’s in the middle, there’s precisely nowhere to go for two plus hours. I’m pretty stabby by the time we hit MSP.

To top it all off, E blew a tire on the way to get me and I had to take a cab to a sketchy part of south Minneapolis to meet him and take the dog home (who was also coming to greet me) while he waited for a tow truck. The perfect end to a perfect night!

Boston and the Bar

03 Saturday Sep 2011

Posted by in Cancellation Clusters

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Another from the archives…July 2010.

Trip type: Personal

Airline: Delta

Route: BOS-MSP

For any readers who have taken the Bar exam (or any put-upon spouses who have lived through the fun), you’ll recall (undoubtedly with a shudder) how riddled with anxiety you were in the days leading up to it.

Now imagine that the last weekend before the bar you’re attending one of your best friend’s weddings. Then imagine this:

It’s Sunday, the morning after the wedding, and we’re due to leave Boston on a direct flight home at 6pm (E’s family is on the east coast so we wanted to stay a little longer to spend some time with them). At 11:30, I receive an automated call from Delta saying our flight is canceled and that we’ve been rebooked for tomorrow (aka Monday, aka the day before the Bar) going through Atlanta.

Immediate response: No.

Naturally, I immediately fall apart. I still, however, insist I will be the one to call Delta demanding a better resolution. I call Delta in tears telling them that we must reach Minneapolis tonight. Luckily, they are able to book us on two of the last three seats available. We have to leave almost immediately and connect through Reagan but we should make it home that day.

Off to the airport we go and E suggests we go to the Delta lounge in Boston’s A Terminal for some pre-flight drinks. The A Terminal is broken into two parts with an underground tunnel connecting either side. Our flight was on one side and the lounge was on the other. Nothing can ever be easy.

After a glass (or two…hard to remember) of wine, I’m feeling much better about life in general. We head back to the other side of the terminal to catch our connection to D.C. and find that the tunnel has been shutdown. Completely. As in, we’re on the moving sidewalk and nearly fall into a group of people as we come off of it because everyone has been halted so abruptly.

The crowd is tensely whispering to each other and it’s clear nobody has any idea what’s going on. There are some TSA folks lingering around acting as the barricade keeping us from the other side but they’re tight lipped. About 20 minutes in, I’m ready to have a conniption when they suddenly release the throng. No explanation given but hey, we’re on our way to the gate so I’m willing to let it go.

Finally aboard the Barbie jet, I’m praying we can just get to D.C. and connect home. The plane is so tiny we actually had to climb up the stairs and, as E and I are in the front row, we’re nearly knee-to-knee with the sole flight attendant when she tucks into her jump seat. We’re just about ready to push when she gets a call from the pilots telling her there’s weather trouble in the mid-Atlantic and D.C. is not accepting flights for the foreseeable future. Neat. After another tense 20 minute wait, D.C. apparently reopens and we’re able to leave (it’s funny how long 20 minutes can feel when you have no idea if you’re ever going to move).

We land in D.C. and as we come off the jetway and into the airport I see the telltale signs of a day of terrible mid-Atlantic weather: it looks like a refugee zone. (I ended up chatting with a woman who’d been at Reagan since 8am (it’s about 5pm at this point) trying to get to Atlanta. And she was with a small child. Note to self: It can always be worse.))

Now comes the fun of flying through Reagan where flights are bounced from gate to gate constantly. There were two flights to Minneapolis that afternoon, one at 4pm and one at 7pm. We’re on the 7pm but the 4pm hasn’t even left yet so I’m not feeling very optimistic about an on-time departure. Watching the flight board was useless as our flight went from one gate to another to disappearing altogether at one point. Finally, E suggested we split up and stand in line at each of the two counters we’d variously seen listed as hosting our flight (we needed seat assignments since we’d been added so late to the flight).

As I’m standing in my line across the concourse, I strike up a conversation (obviously) with some guy who tells me he’s a consultant who flies this route every Sunday and has yet to see a flight leave a.) on time, or b.) from it’s originally scheduled gate. Comforting.

Finally, there’s an announcement that the 4pm flight will leave from Gate 12 (where E is in line) at 8pm and the 7pm will leave immediately after). By the grace of g-d, E stays in line despite this announcement and when the gate agent comes back to say that there are 10 extra seats on the flight and the first 10 people in line will get them, the first thing to go right all day does and we get on the plane.

Despite my seatmate telling me the flight is Detroit-bound as some kind of sadistic joke, everything goes smoothly as we head to MSP. Funnily enough, for all the craziness we endured, we end up making it home only an hour later than we would have on our original flight.

(And E passed the bar.)

Reading for Comprehension

30 Tuesday Aug 2011

Posted by in Seatmate Shenanigans

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In honor of today being my second anniversary (love you, E!) and me currently being on yet another adventure to Atlanta, I have to post a remembrance from a flight I took one year ago today (yes, I am 0-2 on being home for our anniversary).

Trip type: Business

Airline: Delta

Route: MSP-SNA

Please keep in mind that I’m traveling for work so I’m in business attire. I have just closed down my laptop after doing about an hour and a half’s worth of work and pulled out the latest issue of The Economist.

Gentleman: “Wow, you don’t often see a young woman reading The Economist.”

Me: “I know, can you believe we’re literate now?!”

By way of Green Bay

28 Sunday Aug 2011

Posted by in Holiday Hell

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Trip type: Personal

Airline: Delta

Route: BDL-MSP

Ah, holiday travel…when flight shenanigans abound. No different was a flight home with E…

E’s sister had a lovely New Year’s wedding and we were en route home from CT. We were traveling on a Monday to avoid the weekend rush post-New Year’s Day and had a direct flight from Bradley to MSP. As is usually the sign of impending doom, everything was fine getting out of CT and we were ready for a quick flight home so that we could return to work the next day.

A couple of hours into the flight, the pilot comes on:

“Ladies and gentlemen…we have a bit of a problem. We have been leaking fuel since we left Connecticut. We were aware of the problem when we left but thought we could make it. Unfortunately, we’ll have to make an emergency landing in Green Bay, Wisconsin for repairs. Please return to your seats and buckle up; we’ll be on the ground in 10  minutes.”

Great. Juuuuuust want you want to hear when you’ve been traveling over the holidays and need to get to work the next day.

We land in Green Bay and are told to stay seated while the repair crew looks at the situation. Luckily, this should only take a half hour. Don’t you love it when you’re told something in minutes? Because you know that will happen…

A half hour later it has become evident the repairs will take longer than a half hour (shocker.) so we must deplane. We have been parked at a lonely gate at the end of a mostly abandoned terminal. We all file out and sit in the waiting area. Time marches on and it’s now been a couple of hours. E and I tracked something down to eat (a very sad meat/cheese tray from the only establishment open in our vicinity) and I am starting to get very antsy. Finally, we’re told we can re-board.

Back in our seats, the jet bridge is pulled and the flight attendants quickly go through the safety information, ending by telling us it’s just a 45 minute flight to Minneapolis and we’ll be on our way shortly. Yay!

Then we sit.

And sit.

And sit.

And finally, the light goes on up in the flight attendant area. And then the phone rings for the flight attendant to communicate with the barricaded pilot. More lights come on and one of the flight attendants starts pacing the aisle with a clipboard. Then, the dreaded announcement comes:

“Ladies and gentlemen…we have been unable to verify all the passengers aboard this flight. We were trying to do this manually but because we had to wait so long on our repairs, one of our flight attendants has hit her maximum hours…we are very sorry but this flight will not be departing to Minneapolis tonight.”

Groans everywhere. It is now 7 p.m., we’re a 45 minute flight but 5 HOUR drive from Minneapolis and it is January. The situation looks grim.

So we deplane. I am grumpy and frustrated. We are told our options are:

1. Get a hotel voucher and stay the night…and standby tomorrow until we get on a flight.

2. Sign up for the bus that Delta is going to hire and take that back to Minneapolis.

Frankly, neither sounds good. As I’ve already mentioned, we’re expected at work tomorrow and neither of us has our work laptops along. The bus option would get us home sooner…but then I started imagining the fun of waiting for people to decide, Delta getting a count, Delta getting a bus and then getting ourselves home from the airport (where it would undoubtedly drop us).

E looked at me and said, “Well, what do you think?”

Me: “Ug! I just want to be home.”

E: “Do you want to rent a car and drive?”

Me: “No. But yes.”

So we hit up Hertz and get ourselves a Corolla. In an effort to make a long story short(er), I’ll give you the high points of the drive: White knuckle. Un-lit highway. Five hours. Blowing snow. Semis galore.

We finally made it home about 1 a.m. The next day began our discussion with Delta about getting reimbursed for the car rental. But that’s a story for another day…

Have YOU heard the good news?

28 Sunday Aug 2011

Posted by in Seatmate Shenanigans

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For my inaugural post, it seems fitting to use the most recent travel disaster…

Trip type: Business

Airline: AirTran

Route: ATL-MSP

I’m just getting settled in my window seat (as is my usual wont, I have boarded as soon as possible (not an easy thing to do on an airline with which I have no status but luckily AirTran seems to have maybe two other businesspeople aboard, so it’s a little easier to avoid the rush endemic to Delta flights)) when the gentleman who has the middle seat shows up. He stows his bag above and sits down.

Guy: “Hi!”

Me: “Hi.”

Guy: “Have you heard the good news?”

Sigh. All I can think is:

1. Does this really happen in REAL life?

2. Must this be happening to me right now?

3. Sir, we are on a very expensive form of public transportation. A flying bus if you will. Just because we are seated next to each other does not mean you get to start spewing your religious beliefs at me.

Luckily, I was quick under pressure. My response was:

“That the flight’s on time? Yes. If you’ll excuse me, I need to call my husband quickly before we takeoff.” I then proceeded to fake-call E and have a lengthy “conversation” with him about our Rosh Hashanah/Yom Kippur plans. Oy those things get complicated!