Friday October 18 - Zombie Airport

OK, my flights today did not go well..
Being a tightwad, I bought the cheapest flight home I could find which means I ended up with 4 flights (a new record). If you took a probability course along the way, you might guess that the chances of something going wrong increase with the number of flights.
Hotel was fine and sure enough I asked the nice lady at the front desk for a shuttle and she called someone. While I waited I re-hydrated with juice and coffee at the conti bar, and a local guy picked me up and whisked me to the airport. My first flight was at 8:30 and I was there by 6:30, no lines, so plenty of time to read, people watch, drink coffee. First flight Tucson to Chicago went fine, nice chatting with a young college student going to a neuroscience conference. Second flight (Chicago to Laguardia) not so good. Had a nice chat with a crazy NYC woman while we sat on the runway for an hour getting to the bottom of why NYC people dress in black and lean finance. Got to NYC too late to catch my NYC to Philly flight so I found an American Airlines desk and asked them what was next and the not nice lady told me I was out of luck and I would have to buy a new ticket for the next morning to get home. What!! Your crummy airline made me late! So after arguing with her for 15 minutes, I called Deb and she tried to buy me a ticket (easier on a laptop than crummy wifi on a cellphone) using frequent flyer miles, but the website would not let her pay, so she gave me the info and I went back to the AA desk. A new nice young man was there and he tried getting the ticket from his end and they said I had to call an 800 number to complete the sale, which I did, which ended up in auto-bot hell because the computer thought I was already on the plane (the one I just missed) so did not seem to understand why I wanted another flight. Meanwhile Deb was calling American Airlines to try and push it from her end and the bad lady ended her shift. The next thing I knew, the nice young man handed me two boarding passes for the next morning at 6am, no charge. What??

5636 miles

So by then it seemed silly to get a room so what the heck, lets sleep in the airport tonight. I went to my gate for the next morning and started one of the two books I had brought (and never had time to read on the trip) and watched the airport slow down as the last incoming flights trickled to a stop around 12:30 am. Around 1:00 am I realized that I was pretty much the only person there except the cleaning folks and one woman from Colombia in the same situation as I was in. Around this time a friendly TSA guy came and told us we had to leave. What?? And go where, out on the street? No, you can go to the food court. What? There is a food court this time of night? So me and the Colombian woman left the terminal and sure enough the big central food court was open and about 100 other stranded zombies were there. What a non-festive place. Most were trying to sleep, cranky kids, people crashed on the floor, drooped over tables, talking in their sleep. The one bright spot was the cheery woman running the Au Bon Pain place who told me they were open 24/7 with coffee, juice, pastries (best to keep those zombie stomachs full). So Friday night in the zombie airport.
My book soaked the time up and around 4:00 am security re-opened, I got all my stuff x-rayed again and my next flight left promptly at 6:00 am to Philly. I slept all the way, got the last flight to Burlington and slept all the way on that one. Deb was waiting, got my bag from normal baggage claim (how did they figure that out?) and home and straight to bed. 4 hours sleep and off to a party (with coconut creme pie for my birthday cake, yum), home and bed.
The adventure after the adventure ends.