22 Hours of Airports
I am now officially fucking livid at American Trans Air. I got up at 5:15 and Beth ran me to Mitchell Field about 5:30. I arrived at 6. I checked in, went to take a leak and find the concourse and gate, arriving there just a smudge after 6:27. My ticket said the flight was departing at 6:40. I watched it push away as I arrived at the right gate. Fuck fuck fuck.
The next flight, they said, was at 11:50. I ran around trying to see if I could trade the ATA ticket for Midwest Express or something. No such luck…at least not without $575.00. I ran outside quickly to see if I could catch ground transport to Chicago’s Midway. The shuttle drivers asserted that it was at least three hours from MKE to Midway. That would make me miss my flight from Chicago to San Francisco, so I had the ATA people reticket me for the 11:50 flight, placing me on standby for the Chicago flight leaving Midway at 2:30ish.
I got to Midway after several hours of waiting in Milwaukee, ran immediately to the correct gate and told them who I was. They had oversold the SFO flight by 11, but there was a distinct possibility of me getting on the flight, being the first on the standby list. As the plane was loading, they had an extra seat, but it came to their attention after they called my fucking name that the plane was at weight limit. I was, therefore, ticketed for the 8:10 SFO flight (twelve hours after my original one).
I had five and half hours to kill, so I bought a deli sandwich, grabbed a crossword puzzle book, and got ready for my long wait. Finally, at a quarter till eight, they started boarding the flight that would take me home. I got to sit next to a really cute Asian girl, who was studying Mass Communications at Berkeley and talked to her for a while (no, I didn’t catch her name). Five hours later, we touched down at SFO.
I zipped downstairs and grabbed my suitcase, which had been sitting in SFO’s ATA lockup since about noon, and dragged it out to the Caltrain shuttle stop. We arrived at the Millbrae Caltrain at 11:15. Then, I noticed the time to the next train: 12:24. At 1:15 in the morning, approximately 21 hours 45 minutes after Beth and I headed toward the airport, I was finally home.