I should write a book. The book would be titled How Not to Travel. The cover art would be a picture of me looking really sad, standing at a airport gate as they close the door without me. Unfortunately, the book would be filled with so many embarrassing personal anecdotes that I would be forced to write it under a pseudonym so as to remain anonymous. Full Disclosure: that pseudonym would be Brian Biggest Dumbass Braun-Duin. BBD...BD I was planning on not sharing this story, because it really is a pretty embarrassing story, but I figured some people might enjoy my extreme failures as a traveler, and I have already exhausted my extensive reservoirs of shame, so I figured, what the hey. Lets share how much I punted this time. Lets showcase just how much I suck at this whole traveling around to play Magic thingamajig. Feel free to laugh with or at me. Ive done my far share of both already! Prelude: As some of you may know, on Friday I missed my flight from Charlotte that was supposed to take me to Detroit, where I would then hop on a connecting flight to Los Angeles. Thankfully, Delta rescheduled me without much fuss and I ended up going Charlotte to Atlanta to Los Angeles and only arrived 2 hours later than originally planned. No harm done. Missing my flight and getting it rescheduled was so easy. Too easy, in fact. I figured that wasnt quite enough to wet my masochistic whistle. How about I up the ante a bit in this game of self-wreckreation? Yes. YES. I would love nothing more. Lets up this ante! Interlude: I lost a really savage game 3 in round 9 of the GP to miss day 2 at 6-3. I figured that since I had missed my flight to Los Angeles, which was the first time I had ever missed a flight before, I wasnt going to risk anything coming back. I was going to leave really early for my flight home. I didnt want to leave anything to chance. Missing my flight once was bad enough. I didnt want to make that mistake again. Spoiler alert: I made that mistake again. I left the hotel well over 3 hours before my flight was supposed to leave. I had read online that you can take the metro rail to get to the airport pretty cheap and that it took 30 minutes to an hour. In other words, I should arrive at the airport around 2-2.5 hours before my flight was supposed to depart, worst case. Seems reasonable. Considering the cab I took from the airport to the hotel was over $60, it seemed prudent to save some dough. I opted to Metro. That, dear reader, is when my aether began to unravel. First off, it took me a solid 20 minutes to walk to the nearest Metro Station. Once I arrived, I realized I had no clue what I was supposed to do. There were like 4 different metro trains and there wasnt a map to be found anywhere. I had no clue what train I was supposed to get on and when I was supposed to get off. There was a guy walking around checking your metro cards to make sure you werent stealing a metro ride. I asked him how I could get to the airport. He informed me that I was supposed to get on the train that had...not so conveniently...just left the station mere seconds ago. I mean that literally. I missed this train by about 5 seconds or less. He gave me very detailed directions on exactly what trains I was supposed to take to get to the LAX Airport. I decided to follow his advice. When that train I had missed came back around to the station a good while later, I got on it. Thankfully, this ended up being the correct train to be on. As I was on it, however, I decided to fact check our good friend Mr. Metro Card Checker. The only information I could find were directions from LA Airport to the Staples Center, and not the reverse. Apparently, nobody cares about how you get back to the airport, the only thing that matters is getting out of it. I looked at couple of different sites and reverse engineered the route from the airport to the Staples Center so that I could take the Metro back the other way to get to the airport. This involved a route that was different than what the Metro Card guy had suggested. Uh oh. I was at a crossroads. Literally. The train had just come up to a crossroads. However, I was also at a figurative crossroads. I could follow the fine directions of our Metro Card reader, or I could trust the collective wisdom of the M.F. Internet. I said a silent prayer to Al Gores Old Gods and trusted the internet. It turned out that the internet was right. I actually took the correct trains I needed to take in order to arrive at the airport. However, that 30-60 minute thing was a load of crap. By the time I actually got to the airport, it was an hour before my flight was supposed to depart. I figured I would be cutting it close, but that I would still manage to make it. Oh, how naive I was. Oh, how silly I was. Oh how much I have yet to learn in the ways of the world. Apparently you dont just get off the Metro and end up at the airport. Instead, you have to take a bus from the train station to the airport. I had to wait about 15 minutes for that bus to arrive, and then it took another 15 minutes for that bus to glacially meander its way to the terminal I was flying out of. First, it had to stop at about 90 different random places: a random parking lot, a starbucks, a back alley to buy weed, a red light, etc. This bus stopped everywhere. Everywhere. When I finally got into the Terminal, it was 30 minutes before my flight departed, and the line to get through security pretty much wrapped around the entire city of Los Angeles. I knew right away that I was drawing dead and just immediately went to the Delta help desk to get rescheduled. Yep, thats right. I had never missed a flight before, and I just so happened to miss BOTH OF MY FLIGHTS this weekend. That isnt. i waited in line about 30 minutes at the help desk before I finally got up to the front. During that time, I was checking alternate flights online to see what I could get rescheduled on. There were three options, all of them had a few open seats, but it wouldnt let me reschedule them myself. By the time I got to the front, either those seats had been booked or the person at the counter gave a minimal amount of cares. I was given two options. Option one was to wait a full day to fly out. Option two was to try to fly standby on a flight from Los Angeles to Atlanta, and then try to also fly standby on a flight from Atlanta to Charlotte. Both of those flights were completely full, which means I didnt exactly have the best shot of having this standby thing pan out. No gamble, no future. I decided to roll the dice on the Standby option. *click, clack, click* Snake eyes. Shit. I did not get on the flight from Los Angeles to Atlanta. The flight was completely full and nobody pulled a BBD and missed their flight. The lady at the counter said that my standby status would be transferred to the next flight to Atlanta, leaving a few hours later. At this point, my only hope was to get on that exact flight, and then somehow hope I could make it from Atlanta to Charlotte, even though I missed the original flight to get to Charlotte in time. I durdled for about 20 minutes and then went to the next gate. I decided to check in with the lady at the counter to make sure I was on the standby list. I was supposed to be on it, but I wanted to check for good measure. Obviously, I wasnt. They didnt transfer my name over like they said they would. The lady at this gate was extremely unhelpful and basically just told me to go talk to some people at a help desk. She said she couldnt do anything and I needed to go to ticketing to get it fixed. I went over to the help desk. There was a couple in line ahead of me who kept asking the guy extremely simple questions. After he explained like 6 times what gate their flight was flying out of, and after they sat around just talking about random stuff for another few minutes, they finally left. I stepped up to the counter and the guy gave me a sad look and sad, Sorry, I have to be at another gate. Someone else should come around. Then he just left. I stood there for about 15 minutes and nobody came. There were some phones sitting there, so I picked one up and called in to Deltas phone help desk. After a lengthy explanation of my situation, they basically told me that I could only resolve my issue at the airport. The lady on the other end of the line seemed very nice and helpful, it sucked that she couldnt actually do anything to help me. At this point, they started boarding the flight I had to be on. Still, nobody had shown up to the help desk. I started to walk back to the gate where the flight was boarding to try to talk to the unhelpful lady again, but as I was walking back I heard her announce Nobody comes up to the counter unless I call your name! What a delight. At this point, I was about ready to just give up, curl into a ball, and cry. I really hate dealing with this stuff more than any other thing. Honestly, just dealing with the Metro situation in and of itself was enough excitement for one day. That was really hard for me to deal with. I would have been stressed just from dealing with that, even if I had made my original flight in time. Traveling through airports already stresses me out, and thats when everything goes right. I was literally doing everything I could to keep from hyperventilating or just shutting down completely and giving up. I was at my wits end. Just when I was about to sit down and just give up, I saw someone meandering toward the Help Desk, so I booked it back there. This new lady literally took like 5 minutes to just sit there and charge her phone and do other random stuff before even acknowledging my presence. Now boarding zone 2. Finally, she decided to help me. I explained the situation and her first response was: They didnt just add you to standby at the gate? TILT! I mentally shook my fist at the lady at the gate who shooed me away. I thought she just didnt have the capability to add me to standby. At that point, I knew the face of evil, and it was a 50 year old Delta representative. The help desk woman added me to the Standby list and I walked back to the gate. As I walked back, I saw that my name was at the top of the 30+ person Standby list (lucky) and a few minutes later my name got called to board the flight. Suddenly, things were looking up. It also happened that this flight was going to be arriving slightly ahead of schedule, which means that I still had a small chance of making the connecting flight to Charlotte, which would be the last flight to Charlotte for the night. I was going to be cutting it close, and I was still on Standby for that flight, so there could easily just not be a seat for me anyway. At any rate, any chance was better than no chance. At the Atlanta airport, I got off the plane and I booked it. Even Booker T. Washington himself would not have gotten through that airport faster. My combination strategy of running in free spaces along with aggressively walking through crowds netted me the end result I desired. I made it to the gate as they were still boarding. I saw that my name was on the cleared passengers list. I handed the lady my standby boarding pass, and she gave me a seat assignment. It ended up being a window seat in an exit row. Is that warm diarrhea streaming down my leg or did I just finally get some run hots? Turns out it was the run hots. Lucky again! I was going to make it to Charlotte after all. My flight landed in Charlotte. My luggage wasnt lost. I made it to my car. I still had to drive 3 hours home, but the end was in sight. I shaved the 3 hour drive to a 2.5 hour drive. I made it home, a mere 24 hours after I started. Theres the saying alls well that ends well. I guess this ended well, but damnit, all was not well! If you never see me at a Magic Tournament again, youll know why. Guess I just had a case of the Mondays! Props: Having two flights scheduled to go to Detroit, and never actually setting foot in that city. Slops: Everything else that happened the entire weekend. Moral of the story: Get to the airport 90 hours before your flight is supposed to leave. Actually, make that 91. Takeaway: Work is gonna suck tomorrow. Its going to be pure, distilled assoline.
Posted on: Tue, 21 Oct 2014 09:19:53 +0000
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