Thursday, August 20, 2009

Indy to Jersey - The Hard Way!

What started out as a promising trip has gone a bit awry. I finished up my job at Indiana University with plenty of time to make it 50 miles back to Indianapolis to my plane to New Jersey, connecting in Philadelphia. After setting my trusty GPS to Indy International and setting the cruise to "no cops" I had a relaxing ride until Darlene announced we had arrived and the airport was on my left, which seemed strange since I was the only car in the area. I went past the road to the terminal and turned around to give Darlene another shot at it, when I saw the sign by the barricade: "Airport Closed". Are you KIDDING? I just flew into Indy yesterday! Then I saw the second sign: "Airport has moved", with an arrow pointing to an onramp that split into three roads immediately after I got on it. I flipped my three-sided coin, somehow chose the correct road and was at the new airport in seven or eight miles. Crisis averted! Still had an hour and a half, time to get a BLD (breakfast lunch dinner), leaving me a half hour to get through Security with 20 other folks. Of course Security, since I fit the profile of an old fat bald guy, had me go through the body scanner, I'm sure just to amuse themselves, which takes an extra ten minutes while you take everything left in your pockets after already removing all metal objects and hold the stuff over your head. Then the guy gets a call from the scanner monitor dude "Pat down his right rear" which I'm sure had the monitor guys rolling on the floor as he rubs my butt. "Nothing there - OK you're good to go." So I got dressed and got to my dreaded USAir flight - Our Motto: "We may not be able to do anything else right, but we can land 'em in the river!" So off we go towards Philly on an hour and 15 minute cruise. Two hours later our captain announces that the airport has had a huge storm blow in that had closed Philly and we had been circling and were now going to land in Harrisburg to gas up (since apparently the airlines (did I mention USAir) had no clue we might run into this situation. So we landed, whereupon I learned why sitting next to the door to the only restroom is a BAD thing. While we're on the ground one of the passengers called his father in law who works for FAA or somebody in the know and found out the Philly airport was not closed, but outgoing flights were delayed 45 minutes and incoming ones (that's me) were delayed 15 MINUTES! You mean the plane didn't have enough fuel to allow for a 15 minute delay?! (That was USAir, people.) At any rate we somehow made it back in the air with a "full" tank and made it to Philadelphia just in time for everyone to miss their connections.So after the usual "we can't give you your bags 'cause they're checked through to someplace you are no longer going" I found a baggage professional who located my bag and went and got it! And I got a Hilton room for a $99 "distress" rate.Now I just have to lower customer expectations in NYC since I won't be there until afternoon.Whew! That was a long rant. Sorry.Smee