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Thursday, October 13, 2011

My Anabasis to Albany and Back

This is Steven Petrick posting.

First, and most importantly, I want to thank the guys at Council of Five Nations, in particular Ken Kazinski, for having me. I enjoyed meeting everyone, and hope that those who had not met me previously were pleased with the experience. Even though the event itself was pleasant, however, I cannot say I found the trip at all enjoyable.

I am old enough that I can remember when flying was not an uncomfortable experience in which you more or less were treated little better than cattle in a cattle truck. In short, I can compare my flying experiences as a child to those as a young adult and to what I have just gone through.

I can understand the need for security, but I had to get to the Amarillo airport an hour before my flight for security reasons (which then took about 10 minutes even though I was selected for "extra screening," so I was waiting nearly an hour for my flight, an hour I could have spent sleeping), and two hours early for my flights out of Albany (again it took about 15 minutes to get through security leaving me sitting around the airport for an hour and 45 minutes) and Houston (same story). My flights, however, were early morning ones in the first two cases, and perhaps this is a "one size fits all" solution based on expected crowds through the day. If so, it does not explain why I had to be in the Houston airport at 0930 for an 1130 flight as it still only took about 15 minutes to get through security. I did notice differences between the security in each place. In both Amarillo and Houston they made sure I took off my belt, in Albany I forgot to take off my belt, and my belt buckle did not trigger the metal detector despite being slightly larger than average for a belt buckle. In Amarillo and Albany they were not concerned with my wallet, handkerchief, or comb (okay, I no longer have a full head of hair, but what is left up there does still need the occasional straightening up); in Houston you had to take everything out of your pockets, including any "pieces of paper," in addition to the comb. I will also note that I can feel for the "Homeland Security" personnel who man these stations. Terrorism has made this an apparently necessary task and they have to deal with a lot of unhappy people on a daily basis even if most of us just want to get the security check over with and get on with our travels. I am even now unsure of any reason for "heightened security" during my trip, but this was an almost constant announcement over the speakers at every airport. I know there was an explosion at an airport in Oklahoma, but near as I can make that bomb went off on Saturday, and I was hearing the "heightened security" announcement on Friday, and I just do not know any reason for it. It has been more than 10 years since 9/11/01, and if that is the reason for it, it just seems silly to still be saying it. It becomes background noise with no real meaning if you use the words "heightened security" continuously.

I have heard increasing stories about luggage being looted by baggage handlers (and was actually personally affected by that going through Denver once in the 1990s), but honestly took carry-on only simply because it was all I needed (two shirts, two pairs of pants, two changes of underclothes and socks, a pair of shorts to sleep in, toiletries). However, the number of people who abused the privilege (a carry-on and a "personal item" that was in essence a second carry-on) made this difficult. All the overhead storage was taken by the first passengers to board the plane, and if you were not in that group you had to give up your leg room. As the boarding often was by groups (not always), if you were in group "3" you might find storage space, but if you were in group #4 you were going to be out of luck. (If in group #3, try to be at the head of the line for your group.) Not being aware of this, when I boarded the first plane I was stunned (being in group #3) to find all the overhead storage already full of the baggage of those who boarded in the two earlier groups. I had meant to pick up a disposable razor in Albany, but was not able to, and I am even now unsure if "Homeland Security" would have confiscated a disposable razor had one been in my carry-on.

I learned, and I got up early and filed into line quickly on subsequent flights, so I never had to put my carry-on under a seat subsequently.

On that last flight that did not help much. I am overweight (I would honestly say "fat," but not "obese"), but not so much that I should find my legs cramped in the space between my seat and the seat in front of me. This got so bad on the flight from Dulles to Houston that I was actually beginning to feel claustrophobic, and was looking at my watch every few minutes towards the end because I was so desperate for the plane to land. I know in my heart that airline seating in economy is all the same size, so I should not have been any more cramped, but the fact is that when I sat down on that plane my cell phone was forced off my belt, something that did not happen in any of the previous flights, and there was not enough room for me to put it back on so it spent that part of the trip in a pocket of my "travel vest."

I will take a moment here to say I am thankful I have a travel vest. I have seldom worn it (if at all) since the last time I flew back in the 1990s, but its copious pockets enabled me to begin the trip with several sandwiches and some candy, which stood me in good stead (together with time for a nice Waffle House breakfast before my first flight) getting to Albany. Unfortunately, I did not have an opportunity to stock up on victuals for the return trip, and only had a bag of "Life-Savers" which ran out Sunday night. If you can find one of these, and you are going to travel, you ought to get one. You can put everything from your pockets into the pockets of the vest (and a sandwich or two and some candy) and when going through security you only need to take the vest off and put it in the scanner bin (along with your belt and shoes), then put it back on once you are through the scanner instead of having to put everything back in your pockets.

For reasons that remain obscure, the airline could not verify my flight from Houston to Amarillo, so I left Albany with no boarding pass for my flight from Houston to Amarillo. The distance between gates and the time to make that distance in Dulles did not leave me time to try to again get that boarding pass. This led to great misery in Houston eventually.

When I arrived in Houston, I could see out the window that the weather was worsening, but I have flown in planes when it was raining previously, so I did not really give it any thought. Getting off the plane in Houston, I had to find the gate for my flight to Amarillo. As the attendant at the gate did not know I had to go find a monitor. As might be expected, I headed in the wrong direction. Had I looked for a monitor in the opposite direction I would have been closer to the tram station, as it was I had to backtrack the distance I had covered to find the monitors on my way to the tram station to get to from terminal C to terminal B.

I had good luck in that I arrived at just about the last possible moment to board a tram that was already there and was heading my way. A few more seconds delay and I would have missed it, and not made my gate connection at all. As it was, I got to the gate, and got a boarding pass . . . the last one issued for the flight, just seconds before it was due to begin boarding.

I also got the news the flight had been delayed (the weather did not look that bad to me outside, but it was enough, I would learn, to shut down the whole airport due to wind sheer and lightning strikes). In short I had had plenty of time to "make the flight." Except that about two hours later the flight was no longer delayed, but cancelled.

I was issued a standby ticket for the next plane to Amarillo, but advised that it was booked and my chances of getting on it were dim. No one from our cancelled flight indeed got on that plane (which was also repeatedly delayed). So we were shuffled to the next plane, which was also delayed. Worse, it was not the originally scheduled plane and had been fueled for another airport, which put a weight limit on it. It finally came down to about six of us standing at the gate and only one could go. Since I had the last boarding pass from the earlier flight, I was already eliminated at that point, but I did not know it. Had I known, I would probably have taken the deal they were offering if I volunteered to not make the flight (two days in a hotel, with food vouchers, a ride home on the first flight Tuesday morning, and a $400.00 voucher for the next time I flew in the coming year . . . I was not sure I would ever use that last voucher in a year which was besides the fact that I really wanted the flying experience to end was one of the reasons I did not take the deal).

Then we got the news that if we did not take the deal, we would get tickets for a flight out on Monday, but no other compensation (this after we were formally excluded from the last plane out that night). Weather is, after all, an act of God and not the airline's fault (and the various airlines all had thousands of disabused customers by that point, not just people who missed flights out of Houston, but people who had missed flights into Houston and were stuck in other airports.

Part of me was grateful for the overnight, as I was completely exhausted and staying awake at the airport that night would have been virtually impossible (at some point exhaustion would have cause me to pass out, and I suspect I would then have slept through and missed my newly scheduled flight AND probably have had someone steal my "carry-on" bag). By 0700 hours Sunday morning I had already been up 24 hours straight. (I woke up at 0700 Texas time Saturday so that I would be present at the convention. I was up all day, and had an opportunity for a playtest of Star Fleet Marines: Assault that went on until almost 0200 hrs Texas time, leaving me a maximum of three hours to sleep. I felt I could not take a chance on answering the wake-up call and sitting down tired and passing out again, so I stayed awake the whole night (i.e., another three hours) hoping to catch some sleep on the planes as I had done in earlier days, but it was not to be.) If I had been rested, staying at the airport with a book to read would not have been much of a sacrifice for me, but I had no book to read (I had finished reading the only one I had brought with me, and the book store in the airport closed for the night about the same time I was told I would not be going home.)

I did get nearly eight full hours of sleep overnight at the "Oxford Inn & Suites" in Houston. I went to the bookstore the next morning after passing through security (the first stop of my day actually), and discovered that there was simply nothing in it I wanted to read. That, and a full plane back to Amarillo with a child sitting behind me who loved the sound of her own voice and did not stop talking for more than 20 seconds at a stretch for the whole hour and a half of the flight, and occasionally put her feet up against my seat back (about every five to 10 minutes) and pushed made the final stretch as uncomfortable as the rest had been. (Complaining about the child got me a "there is no seat to move her to or to move you to" and "mom" was not interested in trying to control her beautiful, perfect child. It basically seems to have been decided that the child was going to make someone unhappy, so if I switched seats with her and got my seatmate to switch with her mother, the person in the seat in front of mine would be harassed by the child, and I would still have to listen to her constant "the airplane is mine, the airplane is mine" among many other litanies of things that were hers and the occasional not quite scream, not quite shriek, not quite a wordless yell vocalizations.)