Call Me Wendell Whiner, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The HTML Ordered-List Tag
To continue the story:
- Woken up at 7am by the very loud cleaning staff in the halls of the Spring Hill Suites.
- Eat free breakfast and read free USA Today.
- Brush teeth with free toothbrush and free toothpaste.
- Decide to go pick up bag and return to hotel to shower and change, figuring that will get me to point where 5pm Nantucket flight seems sane.
- Wait 45 minutes for "every 30 minutes" airport bus.
- Hotel van appears, drops off passenger, is now empty, and driver says he's not taking us to airport, someone else will, etc.
- Ask front desk what the deal is.
- "It's not my job to keep track of where the bus is."
- *sigh*
- A major argument ensues.
- After 90 total minutes, already-packed-full bus shows up. We all shove on anyway.
- Bus to monorail to Terminal C. It's 11am now. Even if I was willing to wait for another bus, it's too late to return to hotel before 1pm late checkout.
- Airport luggage people explain that luggage cannot be retrieved as it is already loaded on to 11:30am flight to Nantucket; only way to get it off is to cancel my 5pm reservation. I don't want to do that, since a fresh shirt might have me ready to wait for the flight. Peri, the best lugguage agent in the world, takes pity on me and gets them to pull my bag.
- Call my travel agent while waiting for bag to discuss options. Newark-Boston flights are essentially full all day, all other Nantucket flights are booked solid, thunderstorms expected throughout the region, etc., etc.
- Get bag and change into fresh shirt. Aaaaaaaaahhhh....
- Fresh shirt not enough to make me want to risk another night in New Jersey.
- Find the extemely helpful and well-organized Newark ground transportation desk, who are happy to make arrangements for a 12:15 vanpool to La Guardia. You wait in special heavily air-conditioned area and they come find you when your van arrives.
- Call TA and get reservation on 3pm shuttle back home.
- Call Nantucket to cancel. Weather observation there now is soupy and non-encouraging, so new plan seems wise. Still feel a little bad for not risking it.
- Van has not shown up by 12:40.
- Desk calls driver, who forgot me.
- Last seat in van. Really more of a half-seat. No seatbelt.
- Van covers more ground in one hour than this jetsetter had in the last 24.
- Back to semi-home in the shuttle terminal. Say "hello" to familiar ground staff, snag upgrade, walk straight on to airplane, leave right on time for 30 minute flight to Boston.
- You thought it was that easy, right? Indefinite ground hold. Another two hours in another penalty box, but they're not going to cancel this flight, right?
- Right?
- Right. Contrary to whinging from someone with a really really important meeting who wanted to return to the gate so he could videoconference in, we waited out the delay and made it back to the drizzly Hub.
- Cab it back to scenic south Waltham.
- Check status of the 5pm flight to Nantucket I had been booked on.
- It had been cancelled.
3 Comments:
You could always vacation in Great Barrington instead!
I get upset if I hit the light in Sherburne . . .
Well, the way I think about it is that this is the first time in 3.5 years of heavy travel that I've been stuck somewhere overnight, and it was really only because I was trying to get to Nantucket -- my standard flight back to Boston on Thursday night had no problems. So the amortized aggrivation is pretty small.
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