Air Travel SUCKS - 05 August 2003 . 16:54
After days of hard labor completing my huge list of chores (and with a great deal of help from my sister) my house and yard were finally in presentable shape for the impending arrival of my house guest.
Heather, one of my closest friends, was scheduled to arrive at RDU at 3:40 pm on Monday the 4th. So my sis and I traipse up to the airport (a good 2 hour drive from my house) and wait for Heather's arrival from La Guardia. Because of all the heightened security RDU doesn't allow anyone to go to the gates without a pass. We had to go to the ticket counter and wait in line so a security guy could write us a pass to get to the gate. To get to the gate we had to go through these scanners and shit. Emptied our pockets, take off our shoes (they scanned our shoes!) and then went thru a huge ass metal detector. I went through without incident but my sister set off the detector and got pulled into this little plexi-glass room. The security people were like all over her with those hand-held detectors. Turns out her belt buckle set off the metal detector! She was pissed, especially when they made her undo her pants.....
Once we made it through security and got to the right gate, I kept checking the monitor because her flight was delayed. Each time I checked it was delayed another hour. Then, the last time I checked the monitor, her flight wasn't there!
After waiting four hours in the hot, crowded airport, we finally found someone to give us information about the flight. Turns out it had been canceled! No one could (would is probably more like it) tell us when/if it was being rescheduled. I didn't have my cell phone with me so Heather had no way of getting in touch with me to let me know what was up other than calling my house. I have an answering machine but, of course, it doesn't have one of those code thingys so I can retrieve the messages from another phone. My sister had to be at work at 10 pm so we hit the road and hightailed it back to my house. Heather left an erratic message about her flight being canceled and, since there was no way for me to call her, I called the airline to find out about her flight.
Get this....no one, NO ONE, I talked to would help me. They wouldn't tell me if her flight had been rescheduled, they wouldn't tell me her new flight number...they were useless as tits on a boar hog. Fortunately the last person I spoke with actually allowed me to finish explaining my situation and she gave me a number for LaGuardia that would allow me to have Heather paged. So, I hung up and dialed the number. Busy.
I had no clue what to do so I called RDU. They were even more useless than the airline reps I spoke to earlier. I got things ready to head back to RDU (since I decided the best thing to do would be sit and wait at the airport for her) when the phone rang. It was Heather, in a slightly calmer frame of mind. We finally got to touch base and I found out her flight was canceled due to bad weather at LaGuardia. She also told me it took her 4 hours to find her luggage and some guy was holding her last bag hostage saying he wanted $80 before he'd give it to her. Bad thing is, that jerk works for the airport as a baggage handler! Of course, no security's around when ya need 'em.
Heather ended up too freaked out to sleep and, since she has no credit card for the $240 room the airport offered her, spent the night sitting in LaGuardia's lobby in a hard plastic chair. Lovely. Finally they rescheduled her flight to depart NY at 10 a.m. and arrive at RDU at noon. I made the trek back to Raleigh to pick her up and, along the way, saw way too many cops! Once I got to the airport I was almost creamed by one of those shuttle bus things that peeled out of the parking space at the loading/unloading lane. Dude just whipped over into my lane and I was all layin' on the horn screamin' obscenities at him until he finally noticed me and moved over.
Otherwise, the trip went along without a hitch and we arrived here unscathed. Heather finally got a shower and fell asleep directly after. My sister, who is scheduled to work this evening, is also sleeping along with both cats who are curled up on the living room floor. My day is finally at peace...at least for a few moments before I start cooking dinner. Yippee....
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