There is something about airports. They’re supposed to represent adventure, and travel and all sorts of good things – and they do, they do. Definitely. Going to an airport *does* mean you’re either going somewhere (likely cool) or coming home from somewhere (definitely cool).
But airports honestly, frighten me. Not the aggravation and the stress that just naturally goes with flying, but they genuinely unnerve and exhaust me. There are too many people, too many voices, its’ all too loud. On multiple levels, but in some ways just the physical level. There is not a signal place in an airport that’s quiet. And just when you think you might have found somewhere, tucked off to the side where no one else is, someone immediately comes and camps out right next to you – and you once again find yourself with no space, no privacy, and loud.
It feels as though the noise presses in on me. The pressure of all those people around me with nowhere to escape to is suffocating.
This trip has not been as bad as the “MMM” (Marvelous Middle-Eastern Mis-Adventure) of a few years back (nothing will ever be that bad) but it definitely is not ranking in my top ten. So far tonight?
Well honestly, at first it seemed everything was going well. I got to the airport in plenty of time to get my bags into baggage storage, get my errands run and get back in time for lunch. And then things started going sideways. Seattle got a big fall of snow this afternoon, which backlogged the flights, and of course my flight home? Was routed through Seattle (one of the only times in my career that I’ve gotten a direct flight to SEA and then on to YYJ, that never happens), so a flight that was supposed to leave just after 6 and put me at home just after midnight? Was delayed until nearly 10pm. So right off the bat, it’s impossible to get home tonight. There is no way. The last flight from SEA to YYJ leaves at 11:55pm, always has. Everyone who lives on the island knows that.
This led to me having a ridiculous amount of back and forth with the emergency travel line, who are usually amazing but I think this particular person must have been new; who insisted that they could not book me a hotel until I landed in Seattle. Never mind that everyone knew I wasn’t going on from Seattle tonight, never mind that I knew that the best thing you can do in these circumstances is to book right away because guess what? There’s a ton of people who are missing flights and if you don’t do it fast? There will be no hotels.
So I manage to get a hold of the right person who instantly books a hotel for me, and I get the confirmation in my email and that’s all good…
The flight that landed at 1:30am? Got through baggage claim at 3:05am. My body is currently still on east coast time, and in either time zone? I have now been awake for 24 hours excluding the three hours I managed to sleep on the plane…I’ve gone from temperatures in the 70s to freezing cold and snow on the ground in a 6 hour time span…
And when I call the hotel that I have a confirmation for?
They can’t find my reservation…
They will not even send me a shuttle without that reservation.
And sure enough, if that reservation is not miraculously found? The hotel hasn’t got anymore rooms.
So I’m on the phone to emergency travel again, they are calling other people who are calling the hotel to try and fix this…
In the meantime I am still sitting at the airport…at least wearing the jacket I dug out of my check-luggage….at 3:30 in the morning…
Some contracts? Just have to get in that laaast turn of the gears…