Browsing Tag

Planes

Uncategorized

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

October 5, 2011

Yesterday I entered a parallel universe. I shall call it “Planes, Trains and Automobiles.”

Yea, you know the film.

7 a.m. I wake up.

7:15 am. I have coffee ( with a little lot of almond milk.)

7:30 I repost Emily Rapp’s Little Seal blog on my site so people can read her profound and heartbreaking words.

7:45 I vow not to overpack.

8 am: I overpack.

10 a.m. Arrive at LAX for 10:50 American Airlines flight.

10:15 I am through security with ease. This is going to be a breeze! 90 minute flight to Santa Fe! I have some time to kill so I decide to stand in the world’s longest line to get a bottle of water and maybe a coffee. I don’t really want or need the coffee but I think Hey! I will treat myself since this airport experience has been so awesome so far! No hassle deserves caffeine!

They don’t have any milk I will drink so I go hard-core and drink it black. I can handle this, I think. I’m tough.

10:25 I am at Gate 44 looking for my own Gate 44H. Huh. Where is it? When did LAX get so confusing? Thankfully I have time and everything has been so easy today. (Insert foreboding music here.)

Where the FU*K is Gate 44H? I ask myself while dragging around my ridiculous amount of things and piping hot black coffee. Then I ask it out loud. Nobody knows.

Oh, apparently I have to take a train. Or a bus. Or something that is not my own legs to get there. WTF?!

10:30 I enter an elevator. I get out on wrong floor.

10:32 Panic sets in.

10:35 I find the tram or train or shuttle or bus or whatever the thing is that whisks me to the other side of the airport for gate 44H. What does H stand for? H as in Hell? H for Happy-you’ve- entered -the-Twilight Zone? 

Woman next to me assures me I will make it.  I want to trust her. I really do.

10:39 Walk up to Gate 44H(ell) to a man with crossed arms. I no longer trust woman from tram.

“Hi, I am here for the Santa Fe flight.”

“Closed.” Arms still crossed.

“What do you mean, closed?”

Looking at his watch with the stoniest face mine eyes have ever seen, he says “Gate is closed. It’s ten minutes before.”

I start to cry.

No wait, I shouldn’t lie to my readers.

Have you seen Terms of Endearment?

Have you seen the scene where Shirley Maclaine is in the hospital demanding that they give her daughter, played by Debra Winger, her shots! She was a veral madwoman.

That was me.

I stood there at that gate begging and screaming to the man with crossed arms at the gate, to everyone in the airport. ” Please, somebody help me get on that plane! I must get on that plane! I will be on that plane!”

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnxfDuxaRzA]

There were two other women who missed the flight and he wouldn’t budge. The plane was still right there. I could see its wing. I wondered if I could run out and grab onto it.

He could have opened the door. At what point did I completely abandon all my yogi-ness, I am not sure, but indeed it happened. I went postal on crossed-arms man.

“A baby is dying! I need to get there! Open the door! It’s a baby! A baby! Do you have children? What’s your name? Manny? Manny, do you have kids? ”

At this point Mr. Manny puts his hand in my face. ” Ma’am.”

Oh. No. He. Didn’t.

” Call security, I don’t care. Get me on that plane. Just open the door!”

There is only one flight a day to Santa Fe and I am only staying until Friday morning. My time with Ronan is limited. Everyone’s is. I am now a certified madwoman. You would have thought Ronan was my son. Something snapped in me. I became a Mama Bear. (I have no children yet, not of my own anyway, but just so you know, when I do: Dont Eff with me.)

I wanted to claw his eyes out with my bear hands. At some point, the little tiny plane to Santa Fe took off, with what I later find out, seven people missing because the gate closed too damn early and since Mr. Manny was the gatekeeper, we’d all been screwed.

” We can reroute you to Dallas. Three hour layover and then connect you to Santa Fe.”

Apparently I have no choice unless I wanted to leave tomorrow or fly there on my magic yoga mat and neither option was viable so I was going to Dallas. Yay!

11:40 As I get on plane to Dallas, they decide to take my carry- on away because I had too may personal items.

Of course they did.

2pm : I have bloody Mary on plane. It tastes of tears and pepper.

5 pm : I arrive in Dallas and my very expensive leather purse breaks in half so I am carrying it around like a child.

5:15 I get on a train to take me to Gate B like Boy only to get off at Gate D like Dog and then to get back on and go around and around. And around.

5:50 I find a cafe. I decide to treat myself to salmon even though it was $30. Fish in Dallas is expensive! I don’t finish it all but I wrap the very expensive fish to go.

6:45 I decide to walk back to my gate  even though flight is at 8:10 because Lord knows at this point I would miss my flight again and get sent to Little Rock. From there I might never return.

The Following is a Scene from the Actual Film Planes, Trains, & Automobiles:

Neal: What’s the flight situation? 

Del: Simple. There’s no way on earth we’re going to get out of here tonight. We’d have more luck playing pickup sticks with our butt-cheeks than we will getting a flight out of here before daybreak. 

Neal: I guess we’ll find out soon enough. 
Del: Yeah, but by the time the airline cancels this flight, which they will sooner or later, you’d have more of a chance to find a three-legged ballerina than you would a hotel room. 
Neal: Are you saying I could be *stuck* in Wichita? 
Del: I’m saying you *are* stuck in Wichita. 

7:40 I get on plane. If you want to call it that. It was more like a can of beans or a small Datsun. I am not sure I will ever make it to Santa Fe.

I drop my to go box and my fish falls on the ground.

8:50 10 hours later I arrive in Santa Fe looking like an ex-con on crack who hadn’t had a haircut in 5 years.

But I made it! I made it! I am here with Emily and Rick and sweet Ronan. Please stay tuned to the blog for updates. He is pure love.

You know what? He was worth every tear, every second in Dallas, every rude gatekeeper, every broken purse strap, every bump on the plane. Or train. Or automobile.

I’d do it all over again.

I love you Ronan.