Logan's Run?
I know some of you may be thinking that this shot doesn’t look like San Francisco international airport. To you I say, you are correct. This shot is of someone else’s plane looking out the window towards the Las Vegas strip.
The night before I left the U.S. I drove to my friend Hans’ house in Oakland so that in the morning I would have less of a drive into the city. I left sometime after 5am so I wouldn’t run into a wall of traffic and the drive to the rental car building took 25 minutes, so I was in good shape. The rental people there are very efficient and I was finished dropping off the car before I was able to get all my belongings out of the trunk. Tired and cold I wandered along with the rest of the crowd toward the automated tram car that would deliver us to our intended terminal.
Something I failed to mention in the previous post is that I’m flying standby. While this has been relatively easy so far, today there is something different in the air. Nobody is saying it, but something is definitely up. Did I step in shit on the way in? No (I look to confirm.) Even though I’m being polite and patient, the people behind the counter are short with customers, and are not being communicative with me. After the plane has left the gate, the woman begrudgingly speaks to me. She tells me that my luggage and I did not make that flight to Philadelphia (NSS) and that we would have to wait for the next flight. When I asked about my luggage she informed me that it would not get on the plane without me because that was the policy. OK, time to kill time. Since I was still tired I sat down put on my headphones and did my best to zone out, but not too much because I didn’t want to miss my name being called. I noticed the gate filling up as the time got closer to my flight and I noticed the announcement for first class customers, and the announcement for the various sections of the plane, but I didn’t hear my name. I knew that since I was sitting 15 feet from the counter that they knew I was there, and since they didn’t seem too enthusiastic about answering questions I’d just wait and see. Sure enough the plane left and they didn’t say a thing to me until I went back to the counter and asked what the next step would be. They weren’t sure and I should sit back down until they called me, was my answer. Now I’m starting to get nervous about catching my flight to Paris later in the day, so I attempt to schedule a flight with another airline just in case. This is difficult without a U.S. mobile phone and SFO is not one of the ‘nice’ airports that offers its customers free wifi to make their lives easier when traveling. Just about the time that I have figured out what my other flight options might be, I was called to the counter. Great. . . well the good news was they were going to put me on a flight to Las Vegas. The bad news was that my bag went on to Philadelphia with out. Whoops, someone didn’t know the policy. OK, off to Las Vegas, not too bad, and there is a flight to Philadelphia that looks like I will most likely get on it.
Trash TV (nothing personal)
I couldn’t leave the Las Vegas airport unless they told me there were no more flights, so I killed time. And more time. Eventually I was fortunate and got on a flight to Philadelphia. There was no chance of connecting with my flight to Paris at this point, so I was resigned to deal with the situation the best I could.
When I got to Philadelphia I walked from one terminal to the next trying to figure out where my luggage would have come in, since I was not on the same flight. Eventually I found the luggage counter where they hold your bag if you don’t pick it up off the carousel in time and I was kindly informed that they were unable to tell me where my bag was because it was an international flight and it would be held in a customs holding area. When I asked if it went to Paris without me, I was told that the bag was not allowed to go to Paris without me because of customs regulations and that it would be held for me and only put on the plane if I was on it too. OK, but my toiletries are in my suitcase so… I was handed an official airline toiletry bag and pointed toward the door.
échelle to paradis?
I am a fairly seasoned traveler, so I knew the score. Having left for SFO before 6am I had finally reached Philadelphia at 11:45 pm and after the luggage hunt I was now in search of a hotel after midnight. Hardly fair considering they always charge you for a full day, but I was exhausted and willing to spring for the soft bed over the plastic airport chairs that discourage lying down. The courtesy phone did not have number buttons, you know the one with pictures on one side (informing illiterate people of who they could expect might answer) and a cold steel button on the other side that would initiate the call? Well this was a welcome accommodation at that hour, however, for what ever reason the picture and the associated steel button no longer seemed to be in any way related. Somebody must have reprogrammed the buttons, but was not equipped or willing to replace the pictures. So there I was hitting hotel pictures and getting taxi dispatch, hitting taxi dispatch and getting car rental, and hitting car rental and getting limousine service. WTF? Eventually I got a hotel desk, and even though I was never able to understand the name of the hotel, I did find the shuttle bus and was dropped off in front of the hotel. Whew… now to sleep. I asked when check out was, and then told reception to let me sleep undisturbed until checkout time. (Why not try to get on the clock, and might as well make the best of it, right?) There were no ladders there, I just thought the picture would fit some how. OK, the next day I bathed and prepped myself for the continuation of my journey. My flight from PHL to CDG didn’t leave ’til the afternoon, but I was taking no chances. I reported early at my gate, and then started wasting time. Reading, listening to podcasts, playing solitaire, whatever. This time I did make the flight and all was good. You see the flight is set up so that you get going, have dinner, watch a movie, go to sleep and wake up in the morning just before you land in Paris. This way you are rested and back on the european clock. Well it’s nice in theory anyway.
I arrived on time in Paris and after the wonderful wait in line to show my passport to people that look as if they couldn’t care less, I made my way to the luggage carousel. There is always a certain level of anxiety involved with waiting for your luggage to appear on the carousel, and being that the last time I saw my luggage was two days earlier this time was definitely no different. I waited from the first bag to last bag and mine was apparently not amongst them. Ah sh!t, I’ve been here before, but never in a country that doesn’t speak-a-da-english. Again I went off in search of the luggage desk and when I finally found it and handed over my claim ticket, the man disappeared and re-emerged 3 minutes later with my bag. I was so relieved I just took the bag and headed off towards the inner-terminal tram. I made my way to the TGV station and waited my turn in line. On my way to the TGV ticket counter I called Christine and asked what the best course of action might be, since she was in Avignon for the day and was unable to pick me up at the station in Aix-en-Provence. We agreed that I would try to get to Avignon and meet up with her before she left instead of getting to Aix and making other arrangements.
When my turn came up, I asked for a ticket to Avignon, and the gentleman assisting me told me that if I hurried (oh goody) there was a train going to Avignon in 4 minutes. He also kindly added that if I missed that train to come back and he would fix the ticket for another train. I did make the train, and except for a slight delay for a train change in Lyon I made it to Avignon. Next I needed to find Christine, so I got a taxi to take me over to where they park the tour busses. Done and Done. After leaving at 5:30 am thursday morning I was now in Avignon at 4pm Saturday afternoon. The tour bus driver was also accommodating and agreed to drop us off about 1 km from our house so that we didn’t have to take another bus home. So at about 7pm we arrived back at our house and I began to unload, oh and unpack too. This is when I discovered that when my bag went to Paris without me (I know against policy and apparently beyond the control of customs) my luggage had been ransacked and the employee in charge of luggage in Paris had decided to gift himself a new portable hard drive out of my bag. He/she also decided that they should listen to my iPod stereo while stuck on after hours duty, because the remote was slipped into a different pocket and the batteries were half dead. I lodged a report with the airline, but what can you really do? The hard drive that I bought for Claude was now part of the employee benefit program. Oh well. I’m not suggesting that everybody who travels to Europe stuff all there belongings into the overhead bins (like the WONDERFUL people that fly Southwest) just that if its small and valuable, you may want to have it with you.
Take care everyone.
