Finding Joy in Snarkville

As of the typing of this, I’m sitting at a Recharge station in the Atlanta airport.  I’m sitting here because I took a bump off my flight across country in exchange for money.  (Cold Hard Cash!!  Mir would be proud, I think)

However, this is not a simple story of me going from having a seat on one flight to sitting on the next flight.  No, because this is me, it comes with a story.  Does anyone remember the “Perfect Storm”  where the forces of nature unite together and create a horrible storm and people die?  Well, no one dies in my story, but it about as many things that can go wrong as humanly possible.

Thing 1:  I walk over to my gate just as the boarding begins.  I hear they are looking for volunteers and I run up (sorry, little old lady in a walker that I might have knocked over — kidding, she was a spry 75) and ask, “So what you goin’ give me?” “Oh, we are offering $400 voucher AND lunch AND dinner.”  “Sold.  Here’s my card, where’s my money.”  “Ok, you wait.”

Thing 2: Lady with seeing-eye dog boards.  The guy sitting next to her does not want to sit with a dog (go figure).  We wait as they try to get her re-seated with the dog.  It was lovely.

Thing 3: Boarding continues, they ask for more and more people.  One other guy steps up.  We get to chatting.  We watch the whole plane board.  We watch nearly 300 people file into the plane.  They give our seats away, we think we are home free.  Then we hear (and I need to explain, I’m not being funny here, this is the exact converstion):

Gate Agent: Gordon, here

(on phone — I have no idea what the other half said.)

GA: What do you mean the plane is broke?

GA: The P.L.A.N.E. is BROKE??

GA: Ok, we’ll get them all off and start over.

To us waiting: You may be in luck if they get a bigger plane — if they do, I’ll upgrade you.

Thing 4: There is a VIP onboard.  This VIP would be President Jimmy Carter.  He and his Secret Service get off the plane and they usher him to an undisclosed location.

Thing 5: Gate is changed for the new (hopefully, working) plane.

Thing 6: We lose the guy who had our boarding cards.  We walk, chat and bond a little.

Thing 7: We wait, we wait, we wait.  They have a new plane.  They clean the plane.  They load Mr. President onboard.  I would have totally gotten a photo, except for the very scary Secret Service woman looking at me.  He walked right past me — like I could have hugged him.  I didn’t.  See above the scary woman.  He was happy and um, SHORT.  Like shorter than me.  I’m serious — the man is SHORT.

Thing 8: My buddy was boarded — but screwed over.  He gave him his aisle seat and was given the middle seat and boarded — despite offering and waiting.  I felt sorry for him.

Thing 9: I got my voucher and then the surely guy who ended the transaction refused to honor our lunch and dinner vouchers — so I got a whole $7 for lunch — wow, I might go a little crazy with the eating.

Thing 10: I’m on stand-by for the next flight, but probably no hope of getting on that flight.  I’m confirmed on the last flight of the night.

Thing 11:  I am out of travel yarn.  Yup, I packed really light for this trip and I’ve gotten as far as I can in my pattern without the next color.  I’m totally considering ripping out and re-doing a part of this and being out of yarn seems like as good a reason as possible.

Grand review?  Is it worth my voucher to sit and work in the airport?  Oh yes.  I’m totally ok with it, as I can mostly do what I want from here as well as home.  The problems are other people waiting — I’ve had to ask one guy to STOP shaking the whole recharge station with his leg bounce and listened to a woman (old enough to be my mom) graphically describe the vaginal birth of her son and emergency hysterectomy. Hello — TMI, much?  It is not even 1pm yet — this could be interesting.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 at 10:47 am and is filed under On the Road Again. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.