Boring Chaos

Caryl has always been very nice to me.  And I haven't done a whole heck of a lot this summer.  So when Caryl said I should come visit her and her family in Texas, I thought that sounded like a plan.  I asked Bethany to help me get a cheap plane ticket, and waited.  Because Bethany's good at stuff.

  Bethany found that getting a cheap ticket from Ottawa wasn't happening.  It looked like $620 was the best one could do, which isn't really a deal.  So she asked me if I'd be willing to drive over the US border to Watertown, where they have a little airport which does connector flights to Chicago and places like that.  I was, so she hooked me up with a ticket for just over $300.  

  I booked a hotel room in Houston online, as my flight was arriving around midnight, and Caryl lives about an hour from Houston and I didn't want to keep her or her husband up so late, picking me up.

  I crossed the border with no trouble apart from my nasty ear infection (left ear) making me have to ask the border guard to repeat himself a few times as I couldn't hear a thing out of it.  

   I arrived in Watertown and went to their airport with several hours to spare before flight time.  When I arrived they told me that the connector flight from Watertown to Chicago, where I'd fly to Houston, Texas, was canceled.  And that there were no other flights.  And that it didn't look good.  Severe thunderstorms over a bunch of airports.  The Windy City, in particular, was particularly windy.

  Then they said that the airport in Syracuse (an hour south of Watertown) might be able to get me on a flight, but only perhaps in a day or so, if I drove down there.  And they put me on the phone with a 1-800 number.  

  I was on hold a long time.  Then the lady at the other end said she'd just managed to rebook my itinerary, but I would have to drive really fast to not miss a flight out of Syracuse to Newark, New Jersey.  If I left right then and drove like Batman, I would arrive with about twenty minutes to spare before the plane left.  I agreed, thinking it might be possible.  

  The rain was really aggressive.  I drove like Batman.  I put my car in a long-term parking lot.  And found that the entire airport was in a knot.  There were huge lineups everywhere with irate and stressed people suddenly not headed all over the planet, messed up by a cascade of flight cancellations.  Was I not "supposed" to go?

  It took them an hour to even "process" me, and they had no idea if or when the purported Newark flight would arrive.  A young guy shook his head repeatedly over my itinerary,  saying it hadn't been done properly, and a seat hadn't even been reserved for me on a flight that wasn't coming anyway.  He gave me a coupon to save money while staying at a hotel in Syracuse for a day or two.  But then he managed to entirely redo the itinerary, and felt proud and lucky to have been able to salvage it at all.  After about an hour and twenty minutes, I was able to go upstairs and enter the boarding area.

  I ate a Coney Island chili dog with cheese up there, but the signage did not reflect my flight coming.  The flight time came and went and the harried airline employees rushed back and forth, trying to answer a queue of passenger inquiries.  One woman tried vainly to control an oversized armload of hyper and anxious children.  An angry and determined two year old ran behind the desk and a very large staffer rumbled in that way they do, carefully looking past the person he was talking to instead of making eye contact: "Ma'am, you need to keep better control of your children."  I'll bet that made her feel better about herself.

  Eventually, a little guy came and told everyone that basically, Syracuse airport had no flights available to reschedule any of today's problems into, and wouldn't for a couple of days.  The flights out for the next couple of days would occur, but were all full, every one.  No one could reschedule anything for anyone, until about three days.  And me with a hotel room booked in Texas, and car parked in a lot in a different city than the one I would be returning to.

  But then the little guy said there was the one flight to Newark, which was there right NOW and we had to decide to get on it, or not.  There was absolutely no guarantee Newark would be any different, or that there would be any flights to anywhere, really.  But if all went well, I might very well arrive just in time to possibly catch a plane to Houston.  Maybe.  

  So, leaving my car an hour's drive away from the airport I was booked to return to at the end of my journeying, I took my geography in my hands and got on a small double-prop plane. I was sitting next to a really talkative ex-military young guy who explained the rationale behind the naming of his various kids (second marriage).  He was very nice.  One of those big, beefy, sociable guys who's probably not thirty yet, but he's already been married twice, served in Iraq and Afghanistan, had a bunch of kids, and bought a house and things.  

  Arriving at Newark airport in New Jersey (it was the biggest one thus far) I managed to find my way across the enormous Terminal C to the counter where the flight was to leave from.  It was to leave at 9:28.  It was 9:02.  Just in time.  I stood around in front of the counter, and by 9:15 was worried.  I asked "Is the 9:28 flight leaving on time?" and they said "Oh, it's gone," looking past me.  

  I was sent off to customer service to see what could be done and got ready to see about a hotel room in Newark.  Suddenly someone came out of nowhere and said "Are you on the flight to Houston?  We've been looking for you..."  and ushered me onto the plane, with everyone looking at me, because at 9:20, I was "keeping" the 9:28 flight from departing.  I had been standing in front of the desk the passengers had just boarded from, about twenty minutes before it was to depart.  Somewhere around 9:45 it actually took off and I read the first half of Susan Isaacs' Angry Conversations With God on my Kindle. 

  We landed in Houston at midnight and the airport was huge but pretty deserted.  I had the hotel room booked, and didn't know if I needed to get a taxi or what, so I went to the kiosk and asked and was told "Oh yeah.  You just go out there and wait.  They send shuttle buses every half hour."  So I went and stood in what looked like the back of a shopping mall.  A giant shopping mall.  A mosquito tried to bite me.  It was so much smaller than Canadian ones (not everything's bigger in Texas).  I laughed at it and it flew away, dejected.

  After about half an hour, getting pretty exhausted by this point, my ear in agony, after popping repeatedly during my flights, a guy hopped out of a shuttle bus and said "Which hotel you want?" and when I told him, he said "Ah naw, they don't send any shuttles after midnight."

  So I went back in to the kiosk and told them of this.  I asked "How far is the hotel from here?" and the young guy who'd told me there would be a shuttle said "Aw, not far at all."  I asked if it was like, a mile, and he said it wasn't even a mile.  I decided I would just walk, then.  "Yeah.  You can just walk.  It's not for," the guy assured me.

  Then the girl sitting next to the guy said "Probably shouldn't walk."  The guy switched views instantly and said "Yeah.  Shouldn't walk.  Not safe."  

  I asked "Like, crime?" and he said "Oh yeah."

  "So, what should I do?" I asked them.  

  "Aw, there are a bunch of guys out THOSE doors, with taxis.  Just walk right up and one will take you."

  So I walked out and a guy leaped forward and said he'd take me.  Like everything in Houston, the taxi was chilly with air conditioning.  It was also loudly playing a live Michael Jackson concert CD.  Sounded like a bootleg.  We drove a few miles to my hotel, and I said "The guy behind the desk actually said I could walk this, because it was less than a mile.  Looks like a few miles, to me."

 "Oh, yeah.  A few miles," the taxi driver said.  "And those woods all along both sides out there?  They have a lot of rattlesnakes and other poisonous snakes."

  Well.

  Then I got my room, bought Tylenol for my ear (well, my whole head, actually, by that point) and sat in bed, read more Susan Isaacs, then emailed Susan (we email occasionally) to tell her I was reading it again, and she emailed back and joked around a bit.

  The next morning, Caryl, who (when wearing shades) looked uncannily like Mary Louise Parker in Weeds, picked me up.  And it's been nothing but beer, tacos, music, funny kids and conversation since.