December 26, 2009
So I’m sitting on a Delta flight, heading to Switzerland for the New Year holiday. Cut me a little slack with the writing in this blog. I’m two-ish hours into the flight, as well as two-ish glasses of red wine into the flight. But let’s be real, with the combination of the druthers of traveling and the altitude, I’m feeling pretty damn spectacular right now! I feel like this is probably the best remedy for jetlag. Get slightly pissed at 7pm American time, which will cause me to pass out shortly after 1am Swiss time... Folks, I’m thinking we have a winner.
So what to talk about…? My day started not too early, but still early enough, this morning. I was awakened by a cute Guy, and informed that it was time to get up! Much to my refusal, I climbed out of bed and proceeded to get ready. The gentleman that he is went downstairs and emptied my dishwasher and started to reload it! I honestly don’t think that I thanked him for this because I was so neurotic this morning, but it really meant a lot. And yeah, I definitely hope to keep him around beyond my typical new year’s curse.
Other than my dishwasher being emptied and my trip to the airport, there wasn’t anything too exciting until I reached Atlanta for my five hour layover. (Thank goodness I’m not on “The Amazing Race” because a five hour layover would just be unheard of!) Anyway, for the first flight I had to gate check my carry on backpack. Now, this is not just any carry on backpack… this is a backpack containing not only my lovely mac, BUT Kirsten’s wedding dress. (Yes, her dress fit into a backpack. Yes, it’s that small. And yes, it will have wrinkles.) After gate checking and saying a silent prayer to Jesus to protect that bag and it’s contents (because let’s be honest, if I showed up in Switzerland without that dress, or a damaged version of that dress, I might as well skip town and never be seen again!) I sat patiently awaiting what was going to happen in Atlanta…
Now, apparently the Atlanta airport is simply trying to keep up with the Jones’ … even though the “old fashion ways” seemed to work just fine. Instead of being handed your gate checked baggage when you exit the plane, they send it to a fancy baggage elevator at the end of the… man, what’s that tunnel from the airport to the plane called? Crap, it totally escapes me right now… but yeah, that tunnel… there is an elevator, specifically for gate checked bags! Yeah, ponder that for a minute.
We were all patiently waiting for our carry-ons when all you could hear were people saying things like “how silly is this?!” or “if they don’t hurry up I’m going to miss my connection!” The tiny, Asian Delta lady finally appeared, wearing her blue and white, obvious airline lady garment, and attempted (keyword: attempted) to punch in her pass code to get the elevator to open. It wasn’t working. And then we had the stereotypical manly men trying to show her how to work it. (Cue the Rocky theme song.) Keep in mind, they were just passengers, who as of 5 minutes prior were all commenting on how they had never seen such a thing! You could tell the poor girl, probably mid thirties or so, was having a horrible day to begin with, and had no clue what to do with all these angry travelers who so desperately wanted their baggage back!
Me, of all people, should have been freaking out. The contents of my 2-10 backpack totaled well over $2500. If anyone should have been pounding on the door and pretending she was Jack Bauer trying to save us from terrorists, while trying her luck on the pass code that she probably needed a thumbprint for, it should’ve been me! How dare these people feel like they had the right to cause a mini-riot and make this woman feel completely insignificant! Long, long, long story short, a larger gentleman who spoke a little English and mostly Hebrew (according to his wife who told me many times that they were about to miss their flight to Colorado, where it was only five degrees this morning) went up and proceeded to bang and pull on the garage-like elevator door like he was going to free prisoners of war in addition to our luggage. All of our luggage was spared with only one casualty...
From my angle all I could see was a black, duffel looking backpack was wedged between the lift and our floor. Goodness, cue the prayers. My thoughts included a few obscenities and many prayers… “Oh shit! It can’t be my bag with the wedding dress! I knew I should have gate checked it! I knew I should have gotten a fake ring and been a bridezilla and forced them to let me take this bag on the plane with me! Dear God, please not my bag! Not the wedding dress!” As I slowly approached the mob, I see my 2-10 logo smiling back at me on the top shelf of the elevator. With a sigh of relief I quickly grabbed the bag and meandered my way up the… (crap! What the name of that tunnel?!) wondering which poor person walking past me was going to miss their next flight because their bag appeared to have taken one for the team.
And that folks, were most interesting parts of my day. There was very little “people watching” done in this airporting adventure. I was shunned to Concourse E in Atlanta at 12 noon. Do you know how few flights leave from the international concourse in the afternoon? You have to wait to at least 3:30 or 4:00 to see sign of life beyond your own and the lady, bored out of her mind, selling magazines. (I went an bought one because I felt bad for her, and maybe because I was in need of human interaction…)
It’s 7:56 American time… time for me to close my eyes along with my laptop and call it a night. I’m only going to be in Switzerland for a week… there’s no time for jetlag.
Signing off as I fly across the Atlantic,
Suz
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