The Ravings of Demented Rabbits

Leaving Las Vegas

So I'm actually in OR now, and have been since 9:30 Tuesday night. For those among you who knew my schedule, this should look suspicious, and indeed, strange things were afoot at the Circle K, as the saying goes.

Let us examine my original flight schedule:

5:57pm Leave New Haven for Philadelphia.
6:59pm Arrive at Philadelphia.
8:20pm Leave Philadelphia for Las Vegas.
10:59pm Arrive at Las Vegas.
11:51pm Leave Las Vegas for Eugene.
2:07am Arrive in Eugene.

This looks great and all, right? Only it's a foul lie. Here's what really happened:

2:30pm Leave my house.
2:50pm Board the Dixwell bus to ride into New Haven to transfer to the airport bus.
3:05pm Arrive in New Haven.
3:40pm As no airport bus has been seen, frantically call Sarah to make sure I'm in the right spot. This action summons the bus. In retrospect, I should've tried to see if it would work with aircraft.
4:30pm Arrive at New Haven airport.
5:57pm Leave New Haven airport on schedule. On a turboprop. I'm right next to the engines. Imagine the loudness, then double for an improperly secured hatch.
6:59pm Arrive at Philly, somewhat deafened.
8:20pm Leave Philly for Vegas on schedule.
11:59pm Arrive at Vegas an hour late. On descent, the captain's words are something like "You'll never believe this, folks, but it's snowing." Indeed, out the plane windows there was a bunch of snow going horizontal, though it was clear on the ground.

We land, get out of the plane, and rush to the Eugene gate, where they politely inform me that the flight's been canceled due to either Vegas or Eugene weather, and would I like to go see a customer assistance agent. Join a line of 10 other people waiting for one of 2 agents.

11:30pm One agent comes out and in a really pissy tone of voice says "Folks, there's 2 agents here. There's 25 downstairs at the ticket counter. They can help you faster there. Go there."

Listening to this was a mistake.

12:00am Finally, after epic trekking through the confusing Vegas airport, find the ticket counters, where there are more like 15 agents, and 300 people waiting to talk to them. Join the line.

2:00am Finally get through the line and get told by an agent that I'm on an 11:57pm flight to Phoenix the next day, followed by a 5pm flight to Eugene that arrives at 7something pm. My mother, who called the airline, found this out faster than me. Highly exhausted, I go looking for somewhere to crash.

4:00am I somehow find an hour of sleep or so sacked out behind a row of benches. Because this is Vegas, it turns into trying to sleep on a concrete floor 10 feet from slot machines that say "WHEEL! OF! FORTUNE!" every 30 seconds, while the airport PA system plays bad Christmas music nonstop. At 4am, I awake, drink a cup of extra-strong Starbucks tea that had been sitting for 2 hours, then read for a while.

5:30am Bored, and waiting for the food places to open, I decide to go visit the ticket counter and see if I can get a better flight. I am informed that I'm now on a 6:47am flight to Phoenix, and am standby on an 11:30am flight to Eugene. This is good, I think.

6:00am Going through security, the TSA person sees my laptop. "Is that a 17" or a 20"?" I'm asked. "17," I reply. "Awesome," they say. "I saw a 20 the other day." "Sweet," I reply.

6:47am Depart for Phoenix on schedule.

Impossible to timeline the next bit, so we'll narrate it. Phoenix, for those of you who haven't been there, has a very very very long airport. If each moving walkway is about 150'-200', and there are 5 of those walkways followed by an intersection and 3 more, and if your gate for your flight that you're on standby for is changed 5 times, 3 of them to the other side of the airport, that equals a lot of walking. At the 4th of 5 gates, they actually move a plane to Long Beach in instead of us, without changing the gate, and some Eugene people get on that plane by mistake. Then they change the gate.

10:57am At the last gate, they inform us that the flight has been cancelled, due to either bad weather, a broken plane, squirrel aliens, because they felt like it, or (E) Trillian. Or all of the above. You can never quite be sure.

11:30am After low-level shouting matches with passengers who are really tired and would really rather go home, thanks, the gate agents, who in their defense aren't really being told a damn thing and aren't being supported whatsoever, book me onto a 3pm flight to Portland, to arrive at 5pm.

11:45am After walking all the way across the airport, AGAIN, call Mom. "Hey, I need a ride from Portland." "You forgot that I can't drive to Portland, right?" "Oh yeah, shit." Wait in another line for a travel voucher to get bussed to Eugene.

3:25pm Perhaps sensing the disastrous consequences if they should change the gate on us, the airline decides not to, but the plane is late arriving anyway. So we leave late, but we leave.

5:25pm Arrive at Portland. A group of 20 of us Eugene folks wanders around lost until our scouts return and inform us that our bus awaits us over there -->. Board bus, happily, if tiredly.

9:00pm Our driver uses his mad driving skillz to get us to Eugene super fast in the fog, and we arrive. This is the first time I've seen Eugene airport in about 5 years.

9:30pm Mom picks me up from the airport. Life is good.

So here I am. I still hurt from walking and carrying bags around for 2 days, and I've slept half the time I've been here, but here I am. It's good to be back.

Posted by Dwip at December 21, 2006 9:59 AM