It’s 7am on a rainy Friday morning at Boston’s Logan International Airport and yes I am blogging for the second time in less than twelve hours; a new record here at Circular Navigation. I started this blog because a couple friends of mine had commented more than once that interesting things were always happening to me, and that I had enough comical/tragic/stupendously unique stories to fill volumes of books. Oddly enough, shortly after starting this blog, my life took a turn down a tremendously boring and overly plain path. But, today on this Friday morning in April, things have once again been fully thrust into the realm of chaos. Today, in the hours when normal people are slumbering comfortably in their cushy beds, I was out and about wreaking havoc on the world and experiencing those things that could only possibly happen to moi! What, say you, could bring on such dramatic proclamations? Oh,I shall tell you. I shall weave the tale that brought me to this place; this moment of blogging furiously from an uncomfortable seat in a freezing airport terminal on a gray morning in April.
It all began at 3:00am. I was sleeping soundly in my comfy hotel bed when the alarm went off a mere 3 hours after I had fallen to sleep. After the haze of sleep induced confusion passed, I remembered that I was in a hotel room in Boston and that I needed to get ready to board a plane in just two hours. Most airports suggest that you allow two hours in the airport before your scheduled departure to go through the checking in/security/boarding process. But what they fail to tell you is that TSA doesn’t open it’s doors for business until 4:30 am. So those who have a 5:30am flight will find themselves waiting at the airport door for an hour before they can be shuffled through the arduous process of getting to the gate. Knowing this, I planned my morning so as not to arrive at the airport prior to 4:30.
I had packed the night before, so by the time I hit the snooze button a couple of times, all I had to do was shower and dress and return the rental car. It was 4am when I walked out of the hotel and began the series of unfortunate events which lead to my blogging a mere 3 hours later. I have a ritual the night before an early flight in which I look through all the cubbies in the console, glove box, doors, and the dark places under seats to retrieve all of my belongings from the rental car. Everything I carry with me has a specific place in my carry on. It’s the only thing in my life I can rely on with certainty. The only stability in my day is knowing that my belongings will all go in my carry on (I don’t check bags for reasons that will become clear later) in the exact same order and position that they have done a thousand times before. So, after collecting all of my things, I put them all in their place in my carry on and set the bags by the door for a quick escape in the morning.
This morning I grabbed my bags, walked out to the car and put them in the trunk, knowing I had already searched the car for stray chargers and pens. I got in the driver’s seat with my usual confidence and struck out for the airport. Unfortunately, I soon met the first of my morning hurdles. The exit ramp to the airport was closed and there was a serious lack of detour signage. I was counting myself fortunate to have gotten behind the hotel shuttle when leaving the parking lot. Knowing it was carrying a load of people to the airport, and banking on the assumption that the detour hadn’t sprung up overnight and that the shuttle driver should know where he was going, I followed the van. The detour went through downtown Boston, over a couple of bridges, around about a hundred turns… eventually, it got me to the airport.
Feeling a bit frazzled, I parked the car in the rental return spot and hopped the shuttle to the airport. I checked myself in for my flight, waited impatiently in the security line, removed my shoes, liquids, aerosols, and ran my laptop through the x-ray screening. Smooth sailing thus far, everything down to a fine science. I grabbed my bag and the bins holding my belongings and moved to the side to put things back where they belong. I picked up my bag, my laptop case, my coat…. oh wait. I had a coat. I came to Boston with a coat and now all I had was the fleece lining of the coat. Instantly the image of the coat’s shell came to mind, sitting on the backseat of the rental car. In the darkness of 4am and having ritually removed all other objects from the vehicle the night before, it had slipped my mind that my coats outer shell remained in the back seat of the car. Add to it the frazzled feeling I was fighting and it is understandable how the oversight happened. I called the rental company and told the desk agent that I’d left an item and would have it mailed to me. It sucked, but it’s not the end of the world.
I made my way to the gate, boarded my flight, stowed my belongings, took my seat, buckled myself in and settled down for the flight to Detroit. That’s when the wheels in my mind went to work. If I’d forgotten the coat, maybe I’d forgotten something else. Something could have been under the coat. I began to run the mental check list of things I knew I had packed in their place the night before. Car chargers, check. GPS, check. Camera, check. Car keys… awww shit. Something wasn’t forgotten under the coat, it was forgotten in the coat. The keys for the company car parked in Grand Rapids, MI (roughly a 3 hour drive from my home base) were zipped in the pocket of the coat that was still lying on the back seat of the rental car a 15 minute shuttle ride away from the airport, on the other side of the security check point and certainly not anywhere near the plane I was sitting on at that moment.
There was only one real plan of attack on this particular problem. I unbuckled myself, grabbed my belongings, talked to the flight attendant. “Yes, this is a very nice plane, clean, doesn’t smell. No, the people next to me aren’t obnoxious. Yes, I realize it’s highly unorthodox to suddenly decide you aren’t going to Detroit at 5am afterall.” I de-boarded the plane, walked back to the gate agent (who looked at me like I was up to something illegal), told my tale of woe and promptly burst into tears. Three hours is not enough sleep and knowing you have a choice of missing the plane or leaving the car keys in Boston is a slight bit more stress than I could handle. Thankfully, Ernie at gate A13 was effected in a positive way by my tears. He quickly rebooked me for a later flight, waived all the change ticket fees, told me that before I returned back through security after retrieving my coat, that I should stop at the main ticket counter and ask for a “wait-list” on all earlier flights. And if anyone gave me any problem about it, to have them call Ernie and he’d deal with it directly!
The rental car company sent my coat back to the airport on the very next shuttle run and the driver waited patiently for me to come and retrieve it after Ernie had taken care of my ticketing woes. All in all, it could have ended much worse. I could have gotten all the way to Grand Rapids before realizing where my keys were. Ernie could have accused me of some terrorist acts or at the very least charged me the $150 change-ticket fee. Or heaven forbid, all the afternoon flights could have been booked solid, thus stranding me in Boston for the weekend. definitely, worse things could have happened.
It was nice to be in the field after such a long hiatus. It is nice to know that my life has fully returned to a state of entropy and I can once again feed off the chaos that surrounds me wherever I go. In the future, however, I will be sure to find a secure location within the orderly world of my carry-on to place the car keys. That way I know, when I pack in the same routine fashion at the end of each and every trip, I will be sure to have the keys before getting on the plane home.
Are you sure you didn’t major in English? Nice writing skills. Sounds like a shitty morning. Hope the rest of the day went well.
Well, they put me on standby in Boston and got me onto the 8:50 flight only because someone else missed the last boarding call. I arrived in Detroit and went to ask to be placed on Standby for a flight going to Grand Rapids, but was told by the gate agent that Delta no longer offers standby when my travel woes are not their fault. They have a “wait list” that costs $50 to have your name placed on. So, I said “uh, hells no” and called the Platinum line (where I still get a kick out of it when they answer the phone ‘Hello Ms. Fuller, how can we help you today?’). I was instantly re-issued a ticket for the earlier flight, no fees, no wait list, no hassle. Then the time rolls around for the earlier flight and all the passengers are there, the plane is there, the ground crew and the gate agents are there… but no pilots and flight attendants. They were stuck in Cincinnati on a mechanical issue. It was after 3:30 before I got out of Detroit. BUT, I’m home now and no worse for wear. So, all in all, it wasn’t too tragic a day.