Soooo...flying.
I have come to hate it. With a passion. I do not know when it happened. There was a magical time about 15 years ago when I was flying all over the country taking depositions. I was a TWA preferred traveler and I would walk up and they would take my ticket and light up thanking MR BECKER for traveling with them and asking if they could please bump me up to first class because they had seats available.
Only later did we figure out that this was a formula for a failing airline.
After that was 9/11. You could not longer walk to the gate unmolested and instead had to go through a security regime that was constantly changing, demanded long lines of people and succeeded in dehumanizing us...just a little more.
After that we lost being a hub because American bought TWA, lied to us (not that we could have done anything about it and told us they would keep St. Louis a hub, and promptly shut us down. Looking back it was clearly the blow that moved us solidly out of the first tier American cities. In my life we could always kid ourselves and say that although we were no New York, L.A. or even Chicago. We were right there with the rest. No more. Arguably Austin Texas and Charlotte and Phoenix and Minneapolis are all more relevant than us. We are the new Kansas City. Oh the humanity!
I needed to get to Ireland to visit with my lovely daughter. We were planning to spend the weekend in Dublin. My wife used frequent flyer miles (these are relics from our American Airlines Master Card) and are at this point ONLY valid for international flying since the only sensible way to fly in or out of the Lou is on Southwest. I knew I was flying internationally so I arrived an hour and a half ahead of flight time being dropped off by a co-worker. I went to the American Airlines portion of the airport. There was one huge line but people were going to kiosks and I followed suit, still waiting in line. Using the counter intuitive machine it recognized me and I scanned my passport and gave them itinerary and then was told I needed to see a gate agent.
That line had 40 people in it and was not moving. The employees helping at the machines spoke very little English (how does that happen?) One of them suggested I was rejected because I did not have a Visa for Ireland? This caused greater panic, along with the line not moving. My 40 pound bag was being kicked along and I looked at my tickets… which were US AIR tickets. Evidently they are merging with American Airlines. That line was very short and I am happy to announce that I shortly had two boarding passes and was headed for the security line.
The security line is so many bad things. I tend to obsess about things I cannot change because I am of course, an idiot. I do not know why the security line fills me with anxiety. I am not (to the best of my knowledge) a drug mule. I have not (no matter what my former partners might allege regarding an odd trip to Turkey) taken briefcases full of cash onto a plane. Why am I so full of anxiety? I think it is just the mere submission to authority. Inflexible, all powerful authority. I am 53! I have a job. I have raised children! But I have to line up with humanity and treated like a suspected criminal, every time I fly. All to “keep us safe”. Granted, the terror instance of 9/11 would have been thwarted by the locked cockpits now mandated but we have to be criminalized and marginalized to “keep us safe”. So I line up and it is always a long line.
You enter. You read about the ban on liquids and sometimes have pictures of the proper size bag. Often they have a nice display of liquids seized like heads on a set of poles as an example to the bad folks who might consider such a crime. You wade forward watching the actual security lines ahead because this is just a line to wait your turn, so you can go get into another line. When you reach the end of the first line you show your ID and boarding pass. I have my Passport out. It is a nice picture, at least 10 years old of me in a suit, considerably heavier than I am now and more substantial. I am dressed in chili pepper chef pants which look like PJ’s because I intend to sleep on the transatlantic flight. He takes a really long time to look at me, look at the picture, comment on how I am dressed and move me along. Sometime they scrutinize my license. Sometimes they make marks on your boarding pass which is...ominous. But I pass.
You then have the dilemma of which machine to cue in front of. You look for families to avoid and people in wheelchairs. You think you're smart but you are not. There is no rhyme or reason to how quickly the lines move and TSA sees me, recognizes my anxiety and everyone in the line I have chosen is either a suspected terrorist, an idiot who has never flown before, or...just an idiot, There are things we all should know by now:
1. Laptops flat down in the bus tub
2. Shoes off and in the bus tub
3. Jacket off and in the bus tub.
4. All metal out of your pockets (yes your change too! That has some metal in it
too! IDIOTS!)
5. Belt off and in tray
But the people in front of you always act baffled by the whole procedure. I mean, I only fly a couple times a year but the itinerary really has not changed for a while. They inevitably do not have their shoes off. Are still wearing their belt, try to go through in their jacket, forget to remove their laptop from the bag...or ALL OF THE ABOVE! I am grateful to not have a gun. When it is my turn I walk up, smile and now walk into sometime type of tube which allows them to see all of me. I spend a moment thinking about how sad it must be for someone to have to be seeing all of me. I stand there the yellow feet are placed. I hold my hands over my hand like a professional. I walk through, expecting to be detained for additional searching. Typically this happens because I did not sterilize my bag prior to the trip and remove things like… wine bottle openers. Why are wine bottle openers in my laptop bag? Why not?
Once through security I get to dress myself again with the other prisoners… travelers...whatever. Now hopefully I have already eaten. For some reason almost every airport but certainly Lambert has made an affirmative decision that once you are through that gate, the only thing you are entitled to is expensive prison food. It is all bad. Do they even have Chili's outside of airports? I hope not. Awful little sandwiches in plastic clamshells with brown lettuce on soggy bread. Starbucks is obligatory for 3 dollar iced tea. If you are gluten intolerant there is literally nothing to eat but the choices are so poor I have become grateful for this.
You go to the bathroom because you think it is intelligent to go before you get on the plane. Your bowels after all, are not what they once were. You walk into a crowded area where men wrestle with pull on bags which they to watch while they pee, and they pee while wearing their carryon bag over their shoulder. Urine is everywhere. The only bigger mistake is to go into the stall which is cleaned weekly.
Then off to your gate. You are now totally at their mercy and this is where the arbitrary decision is made to delay and/or cancel your flight. I used to think they only did this for me but I have compared notes and it seems to happen to almost everyone. Because the airlines have gotten so much better at math they pack the flights and the flights that are not packed tend to get canceled. So you move to another gate and wait. Because you are in an airport there is no place to lay down. This is of course to discourage the homeless people who in the past might have bought airline tickets, pushed their grocery carts through security and then hung out in the airport panhandling for a few weeks. Seriously, why do their have to be armrests between every chair on a bench of chairs. Additionally, why are their no outlets when everyone is traveling with a laptop and a smart phone? Why indeed? I blame Obama.
Then they start to board. The Southwest Airline cattle call has become my preferred way to board. If you call 24 hours before you can almost always get into the B Boarding group and have a good shot at missing the middle seat. Other “legacy” airlines insist on the boarding zones. These are done on a nonsensical basis which guarantees the longest possible boarding but since you have a seat guaranteed who cares… unless you are one of the assholes who “doesn't check bags” because they “don’t trust the airline”. You trust them to maintain a fly a plane so you will not be killed. You don’t trust them with your bag. Genius. These people typically have their over large wheeled bag, another carryon bag AND their laptop bag. SONS OF BITCHES I HOPE YOU ALL ROT IN HELL! So these people care about when they board because it is imperative to hog up all overhead space and delay the flight as much as possible. It is like they do it strategically.
I am only flying from St. Louis to Philly this flight and am grateful for the window. I read the Wall Street Journal. We take off and we land and I have an hour to kill at airport. I find a bad Mexican Burrito bowl to eat. I wait… we board. I call my wife. It takes a long time. We taxi out to take off… we wait...the pilot announces that something is not right. We head back to a different gate. They say we need a new plane. Comforting that they figure this out right before we take off. They say half an hour. Instead it is an hour and a half and we finally take off for Dooblin. I say Dooblin because now I am sitting next to a gen-u-wine Irishman. Been in the US for a year. Time to go home. His speech is almost unintelligible. Still, very pleasant. I read. They serve us a meal that is purported to be chicken. I know it is tainted with gluten but I eat anyway. It is worse than terrible. Chicken is a sauce in a styro-foam dish with broccoli. Warm iceberg head lettuce salad. Brownie I know I cannot eat. Biscuit I know I cannot eat. I drink water. I sleep uncomfortably in my chili pepper pants. It is only a 5 ½ hour flight. I probably do not actually sleep. The seat is narrow. The cushion is hard, the pillow is tiny and styro-foam and keeps slipping through the crack between the fuselage and the seat. But, it is better than full wakefulness. I know I am being poisoned by the recycled air. I am dying. I will not be missed.
Surprisingly the sun is coming up over the horizon. We have of course traveled north in ways that make no sense to me. The sun is very bright over the clouds. I pull the shade. Eventually we land. I exchange pleasantries with my Irish companion. I realize I have not made plans as exactly where I was meeting up with my daughter. Somehow even though the both of us knew it was unlikely our phones would work we just said we would meet up. Just meet up at a strange airport neither of us had ever been to.
I get through customs easily. No daughter. I panic. I think I am going to have to call home and admit to my wife again how stupid I am. I don’t know how to call home. I turn on my iPhone and miraculously enough they have free WIFi at the airport. Take THAT Lambert. My daughter is in the wrong terminal. We meet and get the rent a car. I lived through flying ¼ of the way around the world. I will live to fight again.
PS Wait till you get to hear me whine about the trip home!
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