Final Vegas Update
July 22nd, 2006 @ 11:20 by NormMonkey
From the traveling-sucks department:
Last we heard, our tepid hero finished writing the Vegas tale from the concourse of Chicago O’Hare, gate C1. The flight from Vegas was delayed due to some funky lightning stormage, and the last thing written about it goes something like this: “Anyways, the weather delays mean a less lengthy stay courtesy of Chicago Department of Aviation…”.
I shouldn’t ‘a’ said that.
When I got to gate C1, the board said my flight was on time to leave at 08h05. Fine. It’s something like half-past six now, so I go get some Starbucks and a danish, sit down to write up the rest of the Vegas tale.
Gets close to boarding time, so I finish up the story and some emails, send it all, close up the laptop. Ready to board.
Every 15 minutes or so, the gate attendant pushes the boarding time back by 15 minutes. Seems that our plane can’t get to the gate ’cause the plane that was there first hasn’t left yet.
Finally, that plane goes away and our plane pulls up. A load of harried passengers rushes off. Some of them probably have connections they’re going to barely make, or not make at all. An announcement from a nearby gate goes something like this: “Travelers to Memphis on flight somethingorother, we apologize for the delay, your flight is still on the runway at the other end.” These guys are waiting for a plane that hasn’t taken off yet.
After an hour or so of being delayed in 15 minute increments, they let us board. The poor folk traveling to Graceland had their flight canceled. I feel better to be getting on the plane. Sure, they could always deplane us and cancel the flight, but somehow it seems less likely when we’re on board.
The flight is only about 1/3 full. Everybody spreads out. I have the row to myself. Push the chair back, read my book. We are still waiting. It’s raining so hard, the ground crew can’t get the previous passenger’s luggage off. They can’t fuel us, either. We wait.
The flight crew is awesome. The chief pilot gives us updates periodically. The cabin crew are having fun. One of them grabs a roll of TP from the rear lavatory, runs it right down the aisle. He gets his volunteer passenger to flush, and the TP dashes down the aisle into the back. A girl says, “This is the best flight evar!” Yeah, with the “a” and everything.
Eventually, the rain lets up a bit. They unload the luggage and load ours on. Those poor guys from the last flight have been waiting more than an hour for their luggage. They gas us up. Now the only thing left is for the airport to open the ramp for operations, and for our papers to show up. We had to file a new flight plan. Apparently it’s on the way from terminal two.
It takes a couple of hours to make its way over. We get our papers, the cabin crew closes the doors. All we need is for ramp operations to open up, and the tug will get us on our way. I have been reading book, listening to music, sleeping.
Finally, we get pushed away from the gate. This is supposed to be a two hour flight. We take off. The pilots must have filed for a more direct route, and they are not sparing any fuel. They punch it right up to flight level 370 and burn on over to Ottawa. A fast descent followed by a harder than usual deceleration to final approach, and we’re down in an hour and twenty minutes.
Woohooo!!! Ottawa!!! Home!!!! It’s 15h30. This flight should have been in at 10h00 or so. My original itinerary should’ve had me in at 22h00 or so last night. There’s no way I’m going to work now. I’ve had maybe 8 hours sleep in the last two days.
I phone up good friends P&M. I taxi over to their place to chill for the afternoon/evening. I am pretty much a zombie the whole time. Drooling, walking with arms in front, everything. I eat brains.
P gives me a ride home around 19h00. It is still a bit early, my body wants to sleep for at least a day straight, but I know that if I go to sleep too early, I’ll wake up off-schedule and my body will be messed up for days. I try to finish my book. It seems like I read a paragraph, then my mind wanders to dreamland, my head nods, I start to sleep. I jerk back to wakeyland, just like sitting in the front row of calculus back in university. Repeat more than once for every page in the book through to the end.
I’m gonna have to read that book again. I finished it, but I have no idea how it ends.
