No giving me hell for typos and spelling errors in this entry, because I'm doing this on the fly as I wait for my ride to pick me up and take me to my hotel, which could happen any minute now. By the way, did I mention I'm in Ireland?
But first, a word about my flights:
read more ↓Color me shocked, but customer service still exists in some areas of the universe!
(Okay, so that's more than one word. I'm running on about 30 mins of sleep because they ran Blades of Glory as the second in-flight movie, and I allowed myself to get sucked in because I didn't pay attention to most of it when I saw it on the flight to Puerto Rico. I'll get inside your face! Okay, I'm done. See what lack of sleep does to me? Wait, where was I? Oh yes, customer service. Moving on.)
So with all the flying I've been doing, I've become acutely aware of how grumbly most airline employees are. And I get it - they get bitched at a lot. So I try and be nice to them as I do my thing.
I got nailed at security for whatever reason, and the woman who did my pat down was especially nice and cracked a lot of jokes about the jerks she has to deal with on a regular basis, and didn't laugh when she saw the odd mix of movies in my laptop case (for the record: Desperately Seeking Susan, Sleeping Beauty, Alice In Wonderland and The Secret, which was left over from a project I was working on and I just haven't removed it. Yes, I've seen it more than once, what's your point?) Anyway, it made the process less painful than it normally is.
So I knew my connection in NYC was going to be a bit if a squeaker - blessedly I was able to check my bags all the way through, but I was only going to have about an hour and a half to get from one gate to the other, get a snack, fill my water bottle, and do all the other nonsense I do before a flight. (See, I've gotten wise to the security people and now bring an empty 1.5 liter bottle with me that I fill at the water fountain rather than spend $50 on enough water to last me the flight.)
(An aside - why am I so into brackets today? Maybe another side effect of lack of sleep.)
Anyway. I was supposed to land at 7:30, and the flight to Shannon was slated to leave at 9:10. Perfect timing to get all my crap done and ensure that my bag will make it from one plane to the next.
So we land at 7:40... and sit on the tarmac until 8:30.
Why? Congestion. There's still a plane at our gate and it's not leaving.
Finally I get off the plane with about 20 minutes to spare, and grab the nearest airline employee.
"Connection to Shannon?" I ask her.
"Gate five," she tells me.
I'm at gate 25.
"Tell me they're running late," I tell her.
"Run," she says.
So I do. And the whole time I'm thinking, How in the hell is my bag going to make it from one plane to the next? Also, goddamn am I hungry!
I make it to my connection in the nick of time and tell them I think my bag won't make it on the flight, but they insist that the plane won't leave without my bag. I assume this is BS designed to make me get on the plane so that I won't hold anything up, but I thank them all the same and take my seat... which was a center seat, which almost made me whine until someone asked to switch me for an aisle. Score! Then I asked one of the flight attendants if there was some way to fill my water bottle, and she handed me a giant bottle of Dasani. Double score! Then during dinner, they gave me another giant bottle when I asked for a gallon of water to drink. And did I mention Blades of Glory? Yes, I believe I did.
And yet despite all this, I still didn't think there was a snowball's chance in hell that my bag made the flight. And as the carousel continued to spin with three lonely bags on it - none of them mine - I started making my way over to the help desk to get them to trace my bag... until it popped out on the conveyor belt.
Say what you will about Delta - and many people do - but in my books, they rock.
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