Irish Blatherings Part Two: International Air Travel For Grumpy Old People

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!

Rituals Two: Flying

Back before 9/11 my memory is that flying was so easy. Visions of going to the gate to greet people as they arrived (when did that stop?) I remember arriving at the airport 15 minutes before a flight. Security was annoying in that you had to walk through a scanner. Then you had to have a boarding pas to get to the gate but then...what happened? Security happened. They do a good job but the process has become a ritual and in this case it is a somewhat painful one but it does serve, as all good rituals to get me from one place...to another, only in this case those places are not just in my psyche.

The rituals start with packing. All packing is done with a minor consideration of what you need and the major consideration of whether what you need requires a bag that you have to check instead of carrying on. If you are checking a bag you relegate yourself to the dreaded “lost” bag and if you carry on you have to make sure you are in a position to get on the plane in time to stow your bag over head. If not you will become the victim of the dreaded “gate check” and are once again exposed to “lost” luggage and a mental condition known clinically as “Lost Suitcase Syndrome” (LSS).

LSS affects millions of americans each year. It is when you have checked a bag, arrive at your location and the bag is not brought up off the tarmac for a gate checked back or does not come up on the carousel for a checked bag. The first sign of LSS is the stricken look and then you begin the Kuebler Ross stages of denial (perhaps if I wait a little longer and stare mournfully at the chute which spits out the bags mine will arrive). There is also the period where you realize you left you baggage claim tags in the pocket of the seat in front of you on the plane and a frenzied checking of the pockets. After paling and suffering some anguish you move on to anger (I flew 3 thousand miles in a metal tube traveling 600 miles and hour and you idiots lose my bag). This leads to wandering fugue state where you search for your airlines customer service department. This is normally located in the airports equivalent of a dark alley. Not only is it dirty but it is easy to imagine vagrants urinating in the waiting area. It is small. (there is after all no money to be made in finding lost luggage) It is inadequately staffed (there is after all no money to be made in finding lost luggage) It is staffed by a hostile woman (there is after all no money to be made in finding lost luggage) There is a long line of angry, tired, jet lagged people. Eventually you are “helped” by the angry, impatient woman who rolls her eyes at your stupditiy for entrusting a bag to them, your stupidity for not having your claim tags, your stupidity for flying to see you in-laws and finaly is incredulous regarding your hostility resulting in a “not my problem” attitude that can fling the unprepared into homicidal rage. These clerks utter such sage counsel as, “Idon’t have your bag sir.” “I didn’t lose your bag sir.” “I cannot help you if you are going to scream at me sir.” these well trained clerks have been known in times of crisis to close their station and go to lunch. The bottom line is that they do not give a shit. If they were any good at their job they would be doing something for the airline where it makes money. They will then roll their eyes when you describe your bag as “black...about this big (holding hands pathetically to indicate size) and on wheels.” She knows this desribes approximately 94.7% of all bags. Then...they take your contact information and get back to you. At some unspecified date in the future, sometimes when you return from your trip the bag will be left on your doorstep by an anonymous bag farie.

In order to avoud this we pack lightly and jealously keep our bags under our control. This requires that after you pack you get on line and log in and print your boarding pass and check in. This is easy if you are a regular flyer of the airline and have a frequent flyer number or if you kept your itinerary from a month before and can locate your itinerary number. If not, forget about. You can check in the next day when you arrive at the airport and not have enough room to place your bag in an overhead bin and have to.... gate check it.

Then you get to go to the airport. It used to be there were options like short term (close to the airport), intermediate term (slightly further away) and long term (way the hell away). these concessions used to be operated by the airport themselves. Now if yo are going to be gone for more then 8 hours you go to a commercial long term lot somewhere within the same 100 miles as the airport. You pull through several gates, pass on valet service, contemplate covered parking and then go as cheap as possible and park on the surface lot. Scramble out of your car. Forget you charger for your cell phone or blackberry, consider all the places you have to lose your cars claim ticket and get your bags and either wait patiently in the cold for your shuttle bus or trek to their office for pick up. this is where the cattle process starts.

You board a shuttle “bus” which is really a carry all with bad seating and no shocks. The driver will either ignore you or try and carry your bags on to the bus. You get on, you wait till they are satisfied theyhave everyone, you briefly resent the people standing in the warmed valet area who are picked up last and dropped off first and you head for the terminal. You are always (violating numerous laws of probability and physics) the last one dropped off. Then..do you tip this person? If they do not help with your bags what have they done? You watch some people do it. You guiltily give the guy a buck.
if yur checking a bag you go tocurb check in. terminal check in must be avoided at all costs. These guys (TWA used to call them “sky caps”) are normally the most motivated people in the process and normally are the most competent and pleasant people at the airport. Smile at them. Tip them generously so as not to forget to put your bag on the converyor. These are the last competent people you will see in this process.

if you are not checking a bag you go into the terminal. Try and check in at a kiosk. You will find that there are lines of people in front of the kioks and that a minimus of 25% of them (I think this is a Federally mandated number) are out of order. make sure you have your major credit card so they can “find you”. Swipe it...in theory it immediatly accesses your itinerary and allows you the option to check your bag, “no” and thenprints a boarding pass. This is ofc ourse if you did not print it out the night before on line. When you print out at airport you will see an H on your pass indicating that you are in the 8th boarding group. You curse.

Next it off to the TSA line. The cattle process continues with TSA employees (handlers) barking instructions and gesticulating you into various ques. Curse the first class passengers (who you already cursed at the valet position in the car park) as they are in their own shorter line (presumably getting back rubs and lahte grande’s from pleasant good looking TSA staff) and you wander when terrorism became something the rich should be more insulated and less inconvenienced by. as you are getting in line you are asked for boarding pass and ID (picture ID drivers license or Passport) and if you do not have one you then have to make a trip to the TSA office (somewhere 7 miles from where you are at) and fill out forms, explain yourself and get cavity searched before you can board. If you have ID and boardingpass you are invited into a Disney Space Mountain set of switchback lanes which do not allow you to see the end. You also have to hear various TSA announcements and you become homicidal as you see the same uncomfortable, unhappy, tense people as you reverse back and forth towards your goal of security check in.

There are ALWAYS idiots in this line. It cannot be helped. The mentally feeble are still allowed to fly. They have never flownbefore, they have not heard the TSA people screeching at them, they have not listened to the recorded announcments indoctrinating all of us like good Maoists. They are... inevitably... in front of you. They have liquids in their carry on bags which do not comply with the new policy and are not under 3 ounces and not in a clear one quart bag. They are asking for a bag, arguing that their lunch bag is adequate, aguing that their toothpaste is not dangerous. The TSA should taser these people in prelude to looting their luggage, shooting them and leaving their bodies in dumspters but instead they yell at them and we wait. Boy do we wait.

They tell you to arrive two hours early. That is good advice because even though an hour should always be enough time there is an anxiety in waiting in that line which takes years off your life if you are in ANY jeopardy of missing your flight. I reccomend Paxil but consider getting a prescription for any anti anxiety drug. You will need to do this a few weeks before you fly because it needs to build up in your system. Do it but get there two hours early anyway because airports are cool comfortable places to hang out.

You while your way through the line and as you apprach the actual checkpoint anxiety once agin rushes at you. Are you carrying drugs? Did someone slip them into your bag? What do you have in which pockets, why did you wear your boots (because you know you have to tremove your shoes) andoh my God I have a lap top to remove from my bag. You approach the tables covered with bus tubbs and start to disrobe and unpack. Lap top layed flat in tub with nothing on top of it, shoes the same way, coat, sweatchirt and hoody...all off and in a tub, and your carry on which you have been schlepping like a mule for that last mile in that line...all on the table...onto the conveyor belt and through the x-ray. You then still need your boarding pass...again but this time without your license and you try and smile as you walk through, hope you dont beep and oh shit, you forgot about your big Loan Star belt buckle and you have to go back through, put it ina tub and walk back through hoping you pants do not fall down and that you are not “singled out” for “special screening.”

You then if you pass muster move to the far side of the x-ray machine, reclaim your belongings, reassemble your life and re dress and move on. You find your gate. You marvel at the fact that there are 4 places to get food and drink while you wait and they all suck. You settle on a Starbucks and because you were good you have 45 minutes to wait. Your gate area is of course full because they do not have enough seats for everyone who is getting on a plane in that gate area. You finally find a place across the concourse and you set yourself into a chair designed by some sadistic German. Somewhere it is writteninto Federal law that airports may not have comfortable seating. there is als a bar between every chair so that people cannot move into a prone position.

You have time to kill so you fire up the laptop. There are no outlets at airports. Sure you can luck into one by sitting on the floor behind a gate agen but do not count on it. Next you get to see that this is one of those enlightened airports that does not have any internet OR is a t-mobile “hot spot.” Somewhere along the line your city planners have forgotten that business travelers and business CFO’s will not do business here because the idiots have decided that free internet was too much. So you buy a newspaper and try and relax. You are about toget in a metal tube which for some reason will be suspended several thousand feet above the ground...relax.

Boarding time comes. You curse the rich valet people again as they board first in a slow carfree way only hobbled by he dreaded “people needing extra assistance and families with small children.” You wait as people line up. We will not even visit on the Southwest Airlines cattle call which should be the subject of numerous scholarly articles and sociological studies but for a quick idea please read the book “Lord of the Flies.” So you wait for them to call you boarding group and then you line up, hand them your boarding pass and wait some more for the people ahead of you to find their seats and take up all available overhead room. Anxiety sets in again as you know there is no room for your bag.

You go down the jetway seeing whether you are flying on a puddle jumper (small jet suitable only for maximum discomfort and fiery crashes) or a big boy plane (huge outdated behemoths that still have ashtrays soddered shut from when they disallowed smoking on planes 120 years ago suitable only for maximum discomfort and fiery crashes. You step onto the plane and are greeted by the steward or stewaress (there are no hot stewardesses..believe it, get over it) and you wait seeing you are in seat 24E. You wade through first class, they already have their cocktails and are not making eye contact with anyone as we trudge through back to our cabin (think trail of tears). Their seats are massive in first class accomodating their girth with room to spare. Their drinks are served in real glasses. They offered refills. You suspect that good looking men and woman are perfomring sexual favors for them when the curtains are closed between classes and that it is just a dirty little secret of first class.

On this rare occasion you find room for your overhead bag (say three hail Marys and one rosarie). You then stand behind the man with the bag that is too big for the space trying to shove it in as he sweats and curses until finally he is relieved of the bag, over his objection by a steely eyed stewardess who admonishes him that he brought to big of a bag on the plane and why didnt her check it in one of the ubiquitous “if your bag is larger then this you must check it” oblivious to the fact that no one has EVER checked to see if there bag was to big because the space provided in those checkrs is the size of a toaster oven. As the bag is taken from the desperate pleading man to be “gate checked” and never seen again there is always an implied possibilityof violence if you do not surrender the bag quickly and quietly.

You find you seat finally and see that you are...of course in the middle seat. To the window seat is a fat smelly man and on the aisle there is a fat smelly women. Both appear to have been ushered here from a homeless shelter by the airline for the express purpose of making you uncomfortable physically and mentally. One of them starts to talk to you before you can bury your face in a news paper or book. You briefly contemplete pretending to be deaf and then are engaged in halting, painful and inane conversation. It is then...and only then that you realize that you have to go to the bathroom.
You sit inyour cramped seat and hear a speech regarding safety belts and flotation devices “in the unlikely case of a water landing” for your trip from St. Louis to Minneapolis. Minnesota is of course the land of 10,000 lakes. You are admonished to turn off your cell phone as the door to the plane closes then you wait....the plane pulls back from the gate....and you wait....the plane lines up for take off...and you wait...then you finally take off noticing that the homeless woman has stopped talking and is now puking noisily. You did not notice immediatly because you have now realized that you have two children with their mother, aged 6 months and 5 directly behind you. The 6 month old has an ear infection and has just started a crying jag which will not stop until we land or she passes out. The 5 year old is busy kicking and punching your seat as his mother in a great deal of stress admonishes him to “just behave Loenard.” You contemplate suicide.

At some point you are allowed to use lap top of iPod and can slip headphones on. They offer you a 2 1/2 oz tumbler of soda. You can buy a warm beer for 6 bucks. The drink has no ice and is flat. You still need to pee. The woman has stopped vomiting. It smells even after the bag is taken away somewhat reluctantly by the the stewardess. You try and read, work on your laptop or do a soduku puzzle. You spend 8 seconds flipping through the airline magazine. You might wish you had some porn on your laptop. Sometime the pilot makes inane announcements about arrival time and gate, apologizes that you are behind schedule and points out that if you squint out the right side of the airline you can see the worlds larges ball of twine.

You develop a head ache from the pressurization in the plane, from your anxiety and lack of sleep or more likely from that brain tumor that you know your lazy doctor has not found yet. You idly hope in your cramped middle seat needing to pee that something in your head might suddenly pop and other then a little blood coming from your ears you will die quickly and neatly. You do not die. You question the existence of God as the fat man starts to snore so loudly that he is drowning out your iTunes and the screaming child. You silently wish ill on his children. You realize your blood sugar levels must be plummeting and curse the bag of stale “snack crackers” you refused an hour ago. You hope that you black out.

The plane starts to descend. You assume that it is losing power and you are about die in a spectacular crash. They announce the “final descent to our arrival destination” and you wander why they are talking that about a thick mountained forrest and wonder about the sadistic sense of humor the stewardess has. You are told to turn off all your electronic devices and return your seat and tray table to their upright and locked position. You descend rapidly. The ground shoots up at you. You wonder f the pilot has ever done this before. You see the airstrip...you bounce hard on the runway loosening some fillings. You slow and are pulle forward in your seat. You taxi to the gate, You wait for the 144 people in the seats ahead of you to slowly claim their belongings, reassemble their lives and proceed out of the plane. As you gather your own and head out you realize the people in First Class are already teeing off somewhere and you curse them again...and their children. You mouth is dry and your skin is cracked from the dry air in the plane. Your angry and tired. Welsome to your business or vacation desitnation.

You consider driving home for the return trip. You fail to think positively about any of these rituals bringing you so far, so fast and so safe. You wonder about the bag retrieval and the rent a car and your hotel reservation and you just wish you were home. You still need to pee.