an airport saga.

I've talked before about how air travel is so incredibly painful. You pay exorbitant amounts of money to be treated like a criminal. Or livestock. Or criminal livestock.

I attended the Association for Rural and Small Libraries annual conference in Chattanooga, Tennessee this last week. (It's way more fun than it sounds.) My trip there was nothing but smooth sailing.

My trip home was anything but.

I'm looking at YOU, United.

In the wee morning hours the day I was supposed to leave Chattanooga, my flight from Chicago to Sioux Falls was canceled for bad weather. What this bad weather was, I couldn't tell you. 

As I was flying back to the teeny tiny Sioux Falls airport, a direct flight was out of the question. I was initially supposed to fly from Chattanooga to Chicago at 12pm, then head from Chicago to Sioux Falls and be home by 4pm. With that cancellation, I was rebooked to go from Chattanooga to Chicago to Denver to Sioux Falls and arrive home at midnight. Trash.

The Chattanooga airport is about the same size as Sioux Falls, so I arrived at the airport none too early and went through security. Wouldn't you know it, I was flagged. They showed me the screen, and the area that was flagged was my bra. Great. So I had to have a pat down. (I still don't know what it was - I don't wear bras with underwire.) After the groping, the agent swiped my hands with some kind of pad. My hands then set off another alarm. (I would love to know what I touched to set off all these alarms so I can avoid it like the plague.) That meant I had to have a FULL BODY pat down AND they searched my luggage. The agent who did my pat down noticed my RBG "I dissent" pin on my backpack, and she told me she liked and then she had a giant tattoo of one of RBG's collars on her arm. Clearly, I was in good company. (And RBG supporters tend not to be the kind of people who want to hijack flights.)
Obviously, they didn't find anything. I got to my gate, only to find out the flight had been delayed. Again and again. We finally took off an hour after we were intended to leave. My connection in Chicago was suppose to take off at 2:24, and with this new delay, our plane from Chattanooga wasn't supposed to touch down until 2pm. Gulp.

On top of that, they gate-checked my carry on, so I couldn't just take my suitcase and go once I got off the plane - I had to wait until they hauled up our bags from wherever they were. 
Once I got my bag, I took off running. We landed at Terminal F, and of course, my connecting flight was at terminal C. I read it's about a mile between those terminals, and of course I didn't have the pleasure of a train or a moving sidewalk. I ran through the airport Home Alone-style and made it to my gate in nine minutes - at 2:20pm. 

Notice how low my battery was. Another topping on the shit sandwich.

Of course, the plane was still sitting there, but the doors had already closed. No one was letting me on that plane.

The gate attendant rebooked me on the next flight from Chicago to Denver, which was to leave in an hour. When the flights initially got messed up with the cancellation that morning, I was supposed to have a four-hour layover in Denver. I made lemonade out of the lemons and talked to my friend Kim. She lives nearby, so we were going to grab dinner while I was there. This new delay cut into our time, but we could still make it work.

The flight to Denver was on one of those gigantic airplanes with ten seats across. I, of course, was sitting in the middle of the middle row - aka, the worst seat. That was the exact same seat I was sitting in when I drug my hungover ass from Reykjavik to Copenhagen and then proceeded to get lost via the train system. Flashbacks.

The flight was fine, but actually getting off the plane in Denver was a different story. Once we landed on the tarmac, they WOULD NOT LET US OUT. Finally the pilot announced it was because another plane ahead of us was having trouble getting its doors open (?!), so we were waiting for either that plane to move or for us to get assigned to a different gate. We sat on the tarmac for AN HOUR before we could finally get off. And, of course, my bag was gate checked AGAIN.

Cue me running through the airport AGAIN. I did make it to see Kim, but we had to rearrange our plans so she would meet me at a restaurant near the airport because I now only had an hour and a half layover. She had ordered my meal so it was ready when I got there. I scarfed it down and then rushed back through security (no alarms went off this time), but seeing Kim (though briefly) was easily the best part of this wreck of a day.

At the gate, my group was the last one to be called to board. I approached the desk and scanned my boarding pass - only to be met by a blaring red light. The woman at the desk looked at the message and said, "You're not on this flight."

By this time, it was 8:30pm mountain time. I had begun traveling at 9am eastern time with something going wrong every step of the way. I thought I was going to melt into a puddle.

I assured her I was on this flight. The flight number and takeoff time on my boarding pass matched. But no - I was not listed as a passenger on that flight to Sioux Falls.
After a little research, it turned out because I missed my original connection in Chicago, the following flight to Sioux Falls automatically canceled. I was rebooked from Chicago to Denver, but I actually needed to be rebooked from Denver to Sioux Falls as well.

Thankfully, there was one seat left on the plane to Sioux Falls - and that seat was in first class! I have only traveled in first class once before, and that was more than 20 years ago - the very first time I flew. We were going to Las Vegas when I was 14 years old, and we all got upgraded to first class because of similar issues. I have to say, that is THE way to travel. (If you feel like spending an extra thousand dollars or so, that is.) I had more leg room than I knew what to do with, and the flight attendants served us beverages in REAL glasses. 

Fancy bitch.

It's amazing how much more attentive they are when they think I've paid the extra money to be there.

By the time we landed, I got my (once again) gate-checked bag (what's the point of carry-on anyway if it's always getting taken away from you?), found my car in the parking lot, paid for parking, and drove home, it was about 1230am. If I had rented a car in Chattanooga and driven home, I would have arrived at approximately the same time.

Many of my mishaps come with some kind of well-earned lesson, like "always take your emergency brake off" or "don't rent apartments through Craigslist." This one doesn't have much of a lesson - air travel sucks, but I'm not about to give it up. I've got too many places to see.

Oh! Here's the lesson:
Always bring an extra book.

You never know when you're going to get stuck on the tarmac.