Americana Panorama: Welcome to My Travel Nightmare

Everyone has bad airplane stories. My friends have bad airplane stories. My mom, god love her, has had to deal with more crap from the airlines than anyone should. Stand-up comedians have built careers on bad airplane stories. I don't fly much, so I had been fortunate enough to not have any major problems traveling until recently. I have now learned what others have to go through... and it sucks.

Actually, the troubles started on the way back from Vegas, when my connecting flight back to Philly from Atlanta was held up because of rain... in Philadelphia, not in Atlanta. Apparently, when there is bad weather hitting the Eastern seaboard, they ground the flights going there so that they don't get stacked up by the bad weather. Well, that was rather inconvenient for me, and I got in one hour late because of it, but that was the trip home, and usually you can handle a small problem on the way home. On the way out to San Antonio a couple weeks ago, I had the kind of trouble you can't handle... trouble on the way TO your destination.

Again, it was a situation where my flight left late (this time going TO Atlanta) because of bad weather. Well, I had planned my trip in such a way that I did not have a particularly long layover in Atlanta, so any delays were going to cause problems. The airlines usually work moderate delays with takeoff and landing into their itineraries, so when you are told that your flight will take off from City A at 8:45 and land in City B at 11:15 and nothing goes wrong so your flight actually does take off at 8:45, you'll probably land in City B around 10:30... and then you might have to wait a bit because you got there so early but you're still good. In this case, we used up our cushion waiting to take off, so it was gonna be a close one.

At this point, I should note that my flight had about 60 high school students and chaperones on their way to Hawaii. Yeah, where was something like that when WE were in high school? Anyway, they had about as brief a layover as I did before boarding their flight to Honolulu, so it was getting kinda panicky when we landed in Atlanta and had quite the line in front of us to get to a gate. Well, in the interest of getting this large group to their flight on time, they changed our gate so we would be right next to the flight to Honolulu. That I understand, and it was a nice gesture. Besides, as big an airport as Atlanta is, I still probably had enough time to make my connecting flight if I hauled ass through the terminal. So, we land, the flight attendants make a very courteous announcement that people who do not have immediate connecting flights should stay in their seats so those who do can get off the plane first and get where they need to go...

And then they didn't open the door... for 5 minutes... 10 minutes... 15 minutes... THEY DIDN'T OPEN THE DOOR.

Suffice to say that by the time they finally let us off the plane, the only people who could make their connecting flights were the kids going to Honolulu.

So I get in line with a bunch of other similarly inconvenienced people to rebook and get on the next available flight... which makes it all the more annoying that we have to keep explaining "I'm here because your moronic staff wouldn't let us off the damn plane." I ask when the next flight is and if I could get on it, the lady starts to type it in, then she makes a face and says, "Oh dear..."

Yeah, that's not something I particularly want to hear or see. I mean she was a nice person and all, but maybe this particular airline should add to their customer service training a lesson about maintaining a good poker face. Anyway, she tells me, "We should be able to get you on the next flight." You can understand if I felt less than confident about that. So while I'm watching the magic board to see if I make the cut for the flight... it gets delayed. An hour later, it looks like they're ready to go... except they had to actually go pull another plane out of the hangar and therefore had to do security checks and so on. Meanwhile, I'm 8th in line for a flight with 8 available seats, and they can bump people ahead of you if those people have better frequent-flyer statuses... so all I can think at this point is this flight's been delayed for 90 minutes, and at the last minute I'll get bumped, meaning that I'm waiting for either the last flight out or I'm stuck in Atlanta for the night. Well, I made it on the flight, we left without incident, and I arrived in San Antonio a good 3 1/2 hours later than I had expected. No major problems that came about because of this, just a major inconvenience for all.

So why was I in San Antonio? Well, for another Academic Egghead conference, and also to see family. I can say that San Antonio is quite a nice city with nice people. The two things that you hear about if you go to San Antonio are the Riverwalk and the Alamo. Well, I saw the Alamo from a passing minivan... that's good enough for me. The Riverwalk is spectacular. It is quite a sight to see in that you have this urban area that is so natural and picturesque, dotted with outdoor eateries and things to see and do. And it's quite safe, because they know that if anything happens to the tourists, they won't come back, and San Antonio is for the most part a tourist town because of the two things I mentioned. The people at the hotel (also very good) made suggestions for places to eat, and they proved to be quite handy. There's an open-air Mexican marketplace that you have to walk a little ways to reach, but for authenticity, it cannot be beat. Go find La Tierra, the 24-hour restaurant with a bakery up front, guitarists and mariachi bands strolling throughout, and amazing technicolor decor.

I also found that if you take about a 10 minute cab ride past the Alamodome to the outskirts, you will find the BEST steaks you have ever eaten in your life, at a place called The Little Red Barn. This is pure Texas, with waitresses in full cowgirl costumes, and the menu painted on the walls, along with brands from (presumably) all the ranches they get their meat from. I didn't even know what a club steak was before I ate there, and now I think anything else would fall short for me. All in all, once I got to San Antonio, I had a nice time, aside from the fact that the weather was ungodly hot.

However, I did have to get back to Philly... and so began part 2 of the nightmare. Actually, it didn't start until the connecting flight to Philly. Again, we were delayed by bad weather in Philly, and when the flight landed, I picked up my bag about 2 minutes AFTER my train left. So I had the option of either waiting an hour for another train or saying "screw it" and getting a cab. I chose the cab... which is how I got to see 2 cabbies almost throw down because they were fighting over who had dibs on an elderly person. Guess who the "loser" got for his passenger? Yuh-huh, me. And when he'd never heard of my apartment complex (even though every cab that crosses the bridge from the airport PASSES it), I knew it was gonna be a rough ride.

Now I know that everyone goes through stuff like this and my experience was hardly unique, but it was mine, and this blog is mine, and if I'm not gonna use it to vent every once in a while, then why do I do this? Don't answer that...