A (Travel) Day In The Life

This is the story of Friday, the beginning of my Arizona trip. All times are 24-hour (subtract 12 from hours over 12 to get the PM time), the name of the airline is unchanged to leave the guilty party unprotected. Photos will be available by the end of the week… keep your eyes on my Flickr.

0630 Eastern Time: Wake up. Boarding pass is already printed from online checkin last night for Northwest Airlines flights at 1715 from Washington Dulles (IAD) to Minneapolis-St. Paul (MSP) and at 2155 from MSP to Phoenix (PHX). While electronics, shirts, and socks are packed, pants are not. Maybe I should pack some pants.

0830: Arrive at work. Work is work. I’d rather fly.

0900: Call Northwest, ask if I can stand by on the 1159 Reagan National (DCA)-MSP flight, even though my ticket is out of Dulles. This isn’t a problem when flying United or U.S. Airways. Customer service agent says no problem, just go to the airport and get yourself added to the list.

1030: Metroing myself out of here, with code on the USB drive that I can look at on the airplane.

1100: The Northwest check-in staff at DCA has a different opinion from that of their 800 number. No standby for me. I love wasting my time, especially when I called them in advance precisely to avoid doing so.

1130: Back down to the office parking lot, where I take one look at the building and decide trying the 1415 at IAD is a more enjoyable option than returning to work. Go TDI go.

1230: Arrival at Dulles, where the Northwest staff is more helpful, promptly confirming me on the 1415, since my original flight is badly overbooked, and placing me on standby for the 1715 MSP-PHX. In this process, they inadvertently cancel my reservation on the MSP-PHX late flight; resurrection of this ticket yields an exit row aisle seat. Cool. I’ll have to check in for that flight at MSP, but that’s no big deal — gives me a chance to scout the gate location at a brand-new airport for me in a brand-new state for me.

1415: Why, oh why, do I keep booking myself window seats on tiny regional jets where the curvature of the fuselage puts the sidewall where my shoulder should be?

1630 ET/1530 CT: For pictures of snow-covered fields over western Wisconsin and the ability to use a GPS out the window, that’s why.

1600 CT: Landing in MSP. We pull up to the gate and wait ten minutes for someone to mate the jetbridge with the plane.

1630: Holy cow, MSP is big. Get checked in for the 2155 MSP-PHX; the 1715 is not even close to an option, again overbooked. With ticket in hand and duffel stowed in an airport locker, I’m out of here, light-railing it to downtown Minneapolis.

1700-1720: Wander downtown Minneapolis. There’s a reason this city has skyways like Canadian cities: IT’S COLD. Apparently, at 25 degrees for an afternoon high, today was unseasonably warm by local standards. File Minneapolis under “Places I’m not moving to.”

1800: Arrive at the Mall of America. It doesn’t look that big as I first walk in (although the entrance to the underground aquarium should have been a clue), but then I enter the central core — to find a cavernous five-story atrium with an amusement park inside. Highlight of this adventure was the four separate sports stores with multiple racks of hockey jerseys inside, something that just doesn’t happen in Virginia. Fortunately for my wallet, the new Nike Team USA jersey material, high-tech though it may be, feels too cheap for its $72 price, and the place stocking Minnesota North Stars throwbacks has no size XXL available. The North Stars were my first favorite NHL team, making an unlikely Stanley Cup Finals run in 1991, the year I discovered hockey as the Richmond Renegades debuted.

1930: Return to MSP. I clear security, retrieve my baggage from the locker, step onto a moving walkway… and drop my boarding pass down the side railing, where the conveyor promptly swallows it.

1940: Attempts begin to get a reprinted boarding pass from the gate agent. She is still working the flight that was supposed to depart at 1715. She is angry. She is taking it out on any customers for the 2140 foolish enough to stand within 50 feet of her desk, yelling at us to sit down until that plane is off the ground. Considering that many of the people standing don’t have seat assignments for this sold-out flight and are understandably nervous about getting on the plane, it doesn’t work well. This makes her angrier.

2010: Tired of Miss Angrypants, I go to the adjacent gate where that agent apparently has only one responsibility: announcing that the Albuquerque flight has been moved to a different gate 20 minutes’ walk away. It takes her ten seconds and zero yelling to reprint my pass.

2100: The actual plane won’t arrive until 2120, so my flight will be delayed. Color me shocked. Now departing 2200.

2130: Flight now departing 2230. Apparently the scheduled crew would have gone illegal (been on duty longer than regulations allow) had they attempted to work our flight.

2200: Flight now departing 2300 due to one flight attendant from the replacement crew taking 45 minutes longer than the rest to get here. If it weren’t 10 PM and we weren’t all tired already with a three-hour flight looming, we might be rioting.

2220: They’ll board us now anyway, so we can leave immediately when the FA gets here.

2300: On the plane, they announce the FA is here and we’re departing now.

2318 CT/2218 MT: Actual departure.

0055 MT: Landing in PHX. Getting to the gate and off the plane takes another 15 minutes, of course.

0205 (0405 ET): I arrive at the hotel after obtaining my rental car, which beeps at me every 20-30 seconds and very briefly flashes some unrecognizable warning light. I don’t care. I’ll call Hertz and swap it out tomorrow morning… er, later this morning. After close to 22 hours, I’m going to bed now.